Essay

An essay is a generally brief piece of prose in which the author explores, analyses or interprets a subject with freedom and a personal voice, without trying to exhaust it or to build a systematic doctrine, and with the aim of persuading the reader of his or her point of view.

The word comes from the French "essai", meaning "trial" or "attempt". Michel de Montaigne used it in 1580 to describe his Essais, conceived as attempts to put his thoughts into writing. From then on the term has designated an open, flexible and unsystematic form, distinct from the medieval treatise through its subjectivity and its deliberate artistic style. Francis Bacon soon followed that model in England, and Enlightenment writers turned the essay into a favoured instrument of public debate and the periodical press.

Essayists have understood it in different ways. Some place it between teaching and poetry; others see it as a way of thinking that combines reflection, learning and style. Aldous Huxley proposed that it moves among three poles: the personal and autobiographical, the objective and concrete, and the abstract and universal, and that the best essays draw on all three at once.

A simple example: an essay on friendship may begin with a personal anecdote, review what other thinkers have said, and end with a conclusion about what it means to look after someone, without aiming at a closed theory.

Today the concept has spread beyond literature, into the essay film and the photographic essay, and in education it is used to assess the ability to argue. The current debate concerns its limits: how much rigorous analysis it should contain, what separates it from the opinion column or from mere digression, and how to balance personal experience with objectivity.