The essay, as a notably hard form of writing to pin down, has inspired some unflattering descriptions: It is a greased pig, for example, or a pair of baggy pants into which nearly anything and everything can fit. In Tracing the Essay, G. Douglas Atkins embraces the very qualities that have moved others to accord the essay second-class citizenship in the world of letters.
Drawing from the work of Montaigne and Bacon and recent practitioners such as E. B. White and Cynthia Ozick, Atkins shows what the essay means—and how it comes to mean. The essay, related to assaying (attempting), mines experience for meaning, which it then carefully weighs. It is a via media creature, says Atkins, born of and embracing tension. It exists in places between experience and meaning, literature and philosophy, self and other, process and product, form and formlessness. Moreover, as a literary form the essay is inseparable from a way of life requiring wisdom, modesty, and honesty. The essay was, historically, notes Atkins, the first form to take the experience of the individual and make it the stuff of literature.
Atkins also considers the essay’s basis in Renaissance (and Reformation) thinking and its participation in voyages of exploration and discovery of that age. Its concern is home-cosmography, to use a term from seventeenth-century writer William Habington. Responding to influential critiques of the essay’s supposed self-indulgence, lack of irony, and absence of form, Atkins argues that the essay exhibits a certain sneakiness as it proceeds in, through, and by means of the small and the mundane toward the spiritual and the revelatory.
Le informazioni nella sezione "Riassunto" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.
Le informazioni nella sezione "Su questo libro" possono far riferimento a edizioni diverse di questo titolo.
Spese di spedizione:
EUR 2,47
In U.S.A.
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. Codice articolo 3476547-n
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. Book is in NEW condition. Codice articolo 0820327875-2-1
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. New! This book is in the same immaculate condition as when it was published. Codice articolo 353-0820327875-new
Descrizione libro Paperback or Softback. Condizione: New. Tracing the Essay: Through Experience to Truth 0.49. Book. Codice articolo BBS-9780820327877
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. Codice articolo ABLIING23Feb2416190239330
Descrizione libro Soft Cover. Condizione: new. This item is printed on demand. Codice articolo 9780820327877
Descrizione libro Paperback. Condizione: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Codice articolo think0820327875
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. Codice articolo I-9780820327877
Descrizione libro Paperback. Condizione: New. Special order direct from the distributor. Codice articolo ING9780820327877
Descrizione libro Condizione: New. PRINT ON DEMAND Book; New; Fast Shipping from the UK. No. book. Codice articolo ria9780820327877_lsuk