Rethinking the Essay from Montaigne to Tik Tok

The class is an investigation of the essay genre from a literary studies perspective and a cooperation between the Institute for Comparative Literature (AVL) and the Institute of English and American Studies (IEAS) and open to students from both departments.

This literary studies seminar deals with what sometimes is referred to as the fourth genre (next to drama, narrative fiction and poetry), namely the essay. We will trace the history of this short text form in an interdisciplinary class combining insights from the English, French, and Latin American tradition. This class will consequently rethink essayistic writing traditions throughout different forms of media, such as the film essay, or more recent essayistic explorations on social media channels such as Tik Tok.

Because of its shortness, the essay has historically often been overlooked or regarded as a ‘less serious’ text form. Admittedly, essays – even today – are everywhere and present us with occasionally rambling personal insights in the form of blogs. However, some of the most powerful discussions on personal freedom, aesthetic principles and political emancipation have been expressed in the form of essays, as their limited length comes with an increased responsibility for authors to present dense thoughts in a rhetorically powerful way.

It goes without saying that our class will start in 16th century France, where Michel de Montaigne shaped the tradition of essayistic thinking amidst the French Wars of Religion and European Colonization, which converged in one of his most important essays on Cannibalism which we will include in our reading list. After interventions from the 18th and 19th century (for instance, Charles Lamb and George Eliot) we will continue with Susan Sontag’s rethinking of the essay as a form of literary reflection. The class will then combine English-speaking and Latin-American traditions in rethinking essayistic writing as form of activism and depiction of queer belonging (Pedro Lemebel, Merle Miller, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde).

The last part of our class will include essay films (Agnès Varda, The Gleaners and I), John Wilson exploration of the strange every-day life in New York City (How To with John Wilson), and the re-invention of the essay on Tik Tok.

By the end of this seminar, students will: 1. display familiarity with the history and generic conventions of the essay; 2. offer comprehensive analyses of different types of essays in different medias that are informed by knowledge of their global cultural contexts; 3. recognize and critically assess the status and importance of a variety of political and aesthetic concerns discussed by a range of essayists in the context of 19th to 21st century cultural production.