- What is a literary essay?
- How to make a literary essay?
- Parts of a literary essay
- Literary essay example
We explain what a literary essay is and how to do one. In addition, the parts that compose it and an example of this type of test.
What is a literary essay?
A literary essay is a short, prose writing that analyzes or reflects on a free theme chosen and addressed by the author. It is considered one of the literary genres, together with narrative, the poetry and the dramaturgy.
There are various types of essays that deal with different topics in areas such as politics, the society, the philosophy and the Arts. They always involve a subjective and personal approach by the author, albeit rigorous, on a topic. This means that an essay has opinions and arguments of the author, but supported by the logic and the information. Its purpose is to argue around the chosen topic.
The essay is usually a short, organized text that uses stylistic and literary resources of the language to give poetic and argumentative force to the ideas it develops. It is aimed at a wide audience, so it uses a vocabulary and style that seeks to be understood by all.
An essay should not be confused with a monograph or a technical document (such as a thesis), because these are types of academic texts and therefore more objective.
Throughout history there have been great essayist thinkers, who made this genre one of the main vehicles for the debate of ideas. Some of the most recognized are Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955).
How to make a literary essay?
The essay is a type of literary text, so it does not have certain and essential steps or elements. However, since these texts are widely used in education, some steps to take into account when writing a school essay are usually listed. These are:
- Choice of theme. An essay must address a topic or an edge of a topic that interests the author. It should not be a very broad topic, but the writing should deal with a certain idea or reflection.
- Documentation. Once the theme is chosen, the process of research and documentation, that is, the subject of interest must be investigated in different sources. The documentation will help to have a broader panorama on the chosen topic and to know what other authors wrote about it.
- Preparation. Before writing it is important to make an outline of ideas that serves as a script or skeleton of the essay and that reflects the order in which each idea or argument will be addressed.
- Drafting. We proceed to write using the script or draft as a basis. This implies exposing the ideas as clearly as possible and in a logical order, so that they are understood by the reader. It is important to make several re-readings of the text and apply the necessary corrections so that the writing reflects the desired ideas and opinions.
Parts of a literary essay
The structure of an essay is extremely free, since it is a type of writing in which the author seeks to argue and reflect. However, broadly speaking, the essay usually has three main parts that help the reader understand the topic. These are:
- Introduction. The author of the essay exposes in the first paragraphs of the writing the subject on which the text is going to treat.
- Developing. The author presents his arguments and theories or opinions on the chosen topic. In addition, data or information can be included that allows the reader to understand more about the issue that is being addressed. This part of the essay is usually the longest.
- Conclusions.. The author highlights the main ideas of the essay or those ideas that he wants to rescue or that reflect his opinions or conclusions on the subject discussed. Conclusions are located at the end of the trial and are not usually very long.
In addition, it is important to mention that the essays can be classified according to three forms of structure (according to the order in which they present the information):
- Analyzing or deductive structure. First, he presents the thesis or the topic that he will address and then develops the arguments related to the subject.
- Synthesizing or inductive structure. He explores the arguments and data first, and then builds on them as a final conclusion.
- Framed structure. It begins with the presentation of the thesis or the topic, then debates the arguments and positions and, finally, re-elaborates the thesis taking into account the findings.
Literary essay example
Some examples of literary essays are:
- Essays of moral and politics, of Francis Bacon.
- A Modest Proposal, by Jonathan Swift.
- The poetic principle, by Edgar Alan Poe.
- The poet Walt Whitman, by José Martí.
- Meditations on Don Quixote, by José Ortega y Gasset.
- Again the metaphor, by Jorge Luis Borges.
- A room of my own, by Virginia Woolf.
- In Praise of Idleness, by Bertrand Russell.
- To kill an elephant, by George Orwell.
- Literature and the right to death, by Maurice Blanchot.
- Human dignity, by Miguel de Unamuno.
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz or The Traps of Faith, by Octavio Paz.