Michigan State University Press Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction

Roundtable: Teaching the Classical Essay
Author(s): Michael Danko, Michelle Disler, Kelley Evans, Shannon Lakanen, David Lazar,
Patrick Madden and Desirae Matherly
Source: Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring 2008), pp. 153-173
Published by: Michigan State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41938952
Accessed: 16-05-2020 11:25 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Michigan State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction
This content downloaded from 200.14.96.56 on Sat, 16 May 2020 11:25:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Roundtable: Teaching the Classical Essay I
Many from creative living

from living authors
authors andnonfiction andexamples
contemporary classes contemporary use assigned examples readings of personal drawn largely narra-
of personal narra-
tive and literary reportage. But a good many professors and practitioners are
conscious of the rich influence and inspiration of the classical essay, the
focus of a long, abundant tradition; these teachers and writers are deter-
mined to keep themselves in touch with that tradition and to put their stu-
dents in contact with it.
With contemporary creative nonfiction dominating the attention of writ-

ing curricula and textbook publishing, questions arise about where to
begin reconnecting to the classical essay: Which essays are best to read and
teach? How might they be taught to twenty-first-century students? What
advantages are there in revisiting those long-gone days of yore? This round-
table attempts to answer those questions while it poses others.
The roundtable participants, all influenced by the spirit of the past and
deeply committed to the history and theory of the essay, have been explor-
ing these questions in their own classrooms, conference papers, and conver-
sations. Patrick Madden, who organized and facilitated the roundtable, is
an assistant professor at Brigham Young University; David Lazar is a pro-
fessor at Columbia College in Chicago and the author of The Body of
Brooklyn (2003); Shannon Lakanen is an assistant professor at Otterbein
College; Kelley Evans is a doctoral candidate in nonfiction at Ohio
University; Michael Danko is an instructor at the Cleveland Institute of
Art; Desirae Matherly is a Harper Fellow at the University of Chicago;
and Michelle Disler is a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio University. Using
the availability of classical essays in the public domain and the accessibil-
ity of the Internet, they have created a free, online, full-text essay website,
http://essays.quotidiana.org/ , and made available over 250 essays by over 50
153
154 Fourth Genre
essayists of the past,

scarce and infrequently
within the following d
This roundtable gre
Writing Programs and
in an online discussion
to the Cotton translat
tions of Donald Frame.
Patrick Madden: When I think about "teaching the classical essay," I

wonder why it s important to make that sort of distinction, whether "clas-
sical" is a subgenre or a timeframe, and whether people can write "creative
nonfiction" without much notion of the history of the essay.
David Lazar: Classical is a difficult term, which runs the risk of musti-
ness, though I think it might have some uses, too. You re suggesting the
classical essay as a subgeneric designation, as opposed to an encompassing
generic term. This comes with an ironic distinction, since its a current
subgenre that got the entire genre rolling - the most generous form of the
essay, and the least, perhaps, currently written. Don't you think? The JJr-
essay? The Mother Essay? In any case, I suppose we're speaking about a
Montaignean form of the essay, digressive, somewhat expansive, open in
form. The time period question is rather sticky, I think. I suppose you
could say the classical period of the English essay runs up to the Romantics:
Lamb, Hazlitt, et al. In terms of formal qualities, Lamb and Hazlitt may be
writing what you mean by the classical essay, though.
But I'm not sure the distinction between the Romantic and the
Classical essay is all that useful. We're always confronted with the problem
of Montaigne. It's hard to argue for the advance in a form that was done
best first. With the novel, we can see kinds of progression over time.
Nonfiction seems to attract generic distinctions as though it had som
kind of epistemological flypaper. Creative nonfiction, nonfiction, essay
lyric essay, formal essay, informal essay, familiar essay (unfamiliar essay?
kind of like that idea!), political essay, autobiographical essay, braide
essay ... I'm not sure if these are signs of confusion or vibrancy. Ther
are times when I just want to talk about the essays and describe what they
do, as opposed to subgenerically labeling them. But I'm full of incon
stancy. I waver.
Roundtable: Teaching the Classical Essay 155
Shannon Lakanen: I like "the Mother Essay," though

mistake it for a reference to content rather than form
talking about here is why students should have a sense o
essay, right? And the easiest answer for me is becau
puts it in his essay on mowing a field, they need to "k
which they work." Eliots "Tradition and the Individ
mind here too, the premise that great art comes from
ing within while simultaneously improvising a traditio
I find it interesting that I rarely see these conver
about other genres - no one seems to question why it's
it could be valuable for poets to familiarize themselves
or Dickinson or Sexton, or why a novelist migh
Frankenstein or Huckleberry Finn. I wonder if our feeli
the case here has something to do with the façade of
essay, the way many of them seem as if one just sat do
came to mind. Many of my beginning students seem to
ing is the easiest type of writing - at least, that is, for
of the term. After they've begun critically reading pers
been through a workshop session or two, they decide t
be the most difficult genre.
Kelley Evans: In terms of genre lineage, it may be ea

tion between early novels and fiction of today than
and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or other
of nonfiction. I could make a case that you should r
Fantomina if you want to write a novella, and I could s
read her essays in The Female Spectator if you want to
think her essays are beneficial to read if you are work
because essays and memoir ostensibly look different in
a topic of public interest vs. the focusing on one person
to work harder to convince you. I would argue that bot
do both of these things, but it may not be so readil
words, the genre's many forms and the essay's extensib
stretched to incorporate other genres - makes lineage l
the more important.
Madden: I think the term essay itself has been bastardi

other generic terms. No schoolteacher assigns students
and if they assign a "poem" or "short story" or a "play
156 Fourth Genre
or "short story" or "p

standing. But the term
something quite the
means a methodical,
makes a rhetorical poin
and ability to collect a
I remember being st
of the Essay" and Th
sought to define (or
tion" but as "non-artic
the essay against what
argue, prove, systema
demics, who are ofte
"essays."
Meanwhile, the term has been assaulted from contemporary literary
journals, some of which call "essay" any and all "creative nonfiction" that
they publish. I've even noticed, in one of two instances, nonfiction editors
who specifically state that they love an essay that reads exactly like a short
story, with all of the drama and suspense, but it's more important because
it "really happened." This, of course, can lead to public outcry when sup-
posed nonfiction is unmasked as fiction. But nobody really cares that
Charles Lamb wrote as Elia, or that Oliver Goldsmith wrote as an old
Chinese man, or that Violet Paget wrote as a man named Vernon Lee.
Those small fictions of persona are not central to the essaying.
Lakanen: The history of the essay has always seemed to look a bit like the
form of an essay itself: the tradition meanders and sometimes seems to end
but then begins again, and as David pointed out, we have this swirling
mass of terms for sub genres of it, though we still can't settle on a one-line
description of what in the world it is (but then again, we probably can't
do that for a poem or story if we consider it for more than a half second).
And of course, the idea that the form began with Montaigne comes into
question, too: though he named it first, we have so many essays that pre-
date him.
Michael Danko: Seneca, whom Montaigne seems to quote every third

paragraph (when he's not quoting Virgil or Horace or many others), tech-
nically, in terms of period, is "classical." As I've been reading him, though,
in his moral letters to Lucilius, I can see immediately why he appeals to
Montaigne; Seneca at times seems almost more Montai

Formally and structurally, Seneca digresses, divagat
fully) as he speaks to his friend. His strong person
times cranky, opinionated, stoic, philosophical, person
of Children" is one of Montaigne's essays that corresp
and temperamentally, not to mention structurally, w
aissance also is a period in which interest in the classics
literature, and thought is reborn. And 300 to 500 yea
and Kenko are practicing their own forms of persona
Japan.
Perhaps we might think of some way of situating these writers within
historical contexts as we think of this specific literary form, since the essay
has seemingly had different periods of vogue, so to speak. Interestingly,
Montaigne was writing during a time of enormous upheavals, in ways shat-
tering the European worldview, as we see in "Of Cannibals." Hazlitt and
Lamb, too, were writing in a kind of Revolutionary-post-Revolutionary
period. One feature of Romanticism is a concern for the environment, for
nature; another is its reaction to the Industrial Revolution, which is liter-
ally gathering more steam at that time.
In Robert Atwan's foreword to the Best American Essays 2006 , he writes
that we live in the age of the memoir; I'm thinking now that the current
popularity of nonfiction in its multiplicitous permutations, from instances
in popular culture to instances in high art, has a lot to do with a kind of
reaction to an ongoing technological revolution in which we currently
continue to find (or lose) ourselves, a revolution moving with an acceler-
ation and velocity even greater than that of the Industrial Revolution.
What does the personal form of writing provide us with, ontologically,
epistemologically, and what did it provide Montaigne with? Another way
of putting my question is, what characterizes our contemporary moment
to account for the popularity of nonfictional forms? Does the personal
essay provide us with one kind of anchor, one form of apparent stability, in
a time of enormous change, even as we may read, say, Montaigne's "Of the
Inconsistency of Our Actions" ["Of the Inconstancy of Our Actions"]?
About nonfictional forms - new, nonce, and otherwise: text messaging,
blogs, online "diaries," and discussion boards - the technology seems to
change (and charge) the form entirely. Previously, with the exception of
published diaries by people like Virginia Woolf and others, we used to
think of the diary as something inherently private, not just personal.
158 Fourth Genre
Concepts of the self,

forms and within thi
Lakanen: I keep return

provides us with an an
the answer is yes, ev
essay embracing the
the semblance of diso
todays essayists. Fro
Hardison's "Binding
which the soul realizes
moment to moment.
has become problema
opment of the genre,
times, too. I find it s
of the essay s utility
that more "difficult"
earlier essayists' work
to hear their own pr
other essayists' tactics
their own paths throu
Desirae Matherly: Th
diaries, blogging, and
writing essays might
understand something
excess for him was t
cially," as he writes
as much a mode, or a
might grasp weeks i
manner of a skeptica
and insight, or even t
Lazar: To speak to wha

has always been form
likely to live easily w
When Hazlitt writes
write as Bickerstaff,
and Coleridge's exper
Ago," we seem less fraught about these breaks in o

the essay than when trying to define the essay in
festations. The essay does argue, even if it is an
trying to understand itself. It is usually leavened w
And the "classical" essay is frequently open. Except
essays reach a point of closure. And the essayist cr
himself or herself, but also to hide in the shadows
essay to perform in ways that perhaps other ge
want it to expand into the epistle, to be our letters
the form to be formally expansive, generally. But
informal) qualities at times, wanting its subtleties,
lations of self, of thought revealed as it is thought
generic qualities. I know I've felt, and written at ti
of work out there that seems like brief memoir, o
rather than essay, so I think distinctions are impor
sical or not, will always test the boundaries of any
pin it down.
Lakanen: Yes, the essay is inherently performative in a way that other gen-
res aren't often expected or allowed to be. I've been sifting through A. A.
Milne's pieces in Punch this summer, and one of the most fascinating aspects
of his work is how innovative he was allowed to be, even with what appear
to be strictly journalistic assignments. His (and his fictional editor's) com-
mentary on his composition of the piece that I am currently reading is
delightful and revelatory and, in some cases, is what persuades me to place
it in the "essay" pile as I'm sifting through this material. In, for example,
the opening of "The University Boat Race" (March 31, 1909), Milne avoids
any actual report of the boat race he has been assigned to cover, and the
banter between Author and Editor escalates until the Editor begs the
Author to end the article. The ostensible topic, of course, is entirely cir-
cumvented by Milne's rebellion.
David's observation that "we are in some ways more likely to live eas-
ily with variations in the form from canonical essayists" also speaks to why
it's so important for students to be well read in the history of the essay -
seeing the vast range of approaches to the form can open up options for
writers. At the same time, while it's important for students to understand
that innovating the form is good, there are some aspects of essaying that I
can't live without: I need to be able to trust that I am in the hands of a
capable essayist, that my readerly struggles with the text will pay off in the
i6o Fourth Genre
end if I am atten
midst of uncertai
Lazar: The idea o

my students loos
I don't think they
the full range o
Belloc can do it,
you're doing. Th
stand that one ca
text, but pedagog
It opens a rich c
ence for the work.
Evans: O. B. Hardison's comment seems to describe the essay as a way to

ride the waves of constant change - a method of coping, existing, flour-
ishing - rather than a kind of anchor for choppy times. The success of the
essay in reinventing itself so appropriately for each age might provide the
"apparent stability" Mike was referring to. Adding to Shannon's observa-
tion that "semblance of disorderly order" is attractive to today's writers
(and perhaps those of the past as well), I'm drawn to the essay by its abil-
ity to undermine my assumptions about itself, even as I'm a devoted prac-
titioner. I was thinking as I was writing of the essay's "reinventing itself"
that this is a misnomer, since the statement displaces the writers of the
genre. Aren't the writers the ones inventing? But as I write, I'm continu-
ally amazed at how the form of the essay forces me to reinvent myself.
Whether or not I should take credit for my inventions, the essay allows
me to feel as though I'm tapping into something larger than myself,
pushes me into the waves, challenges. I'm reminded of Rachel Blau
DuPlessis's observation in "f- Words: An Essay on the Essay" that "given that
the essay is all margin, marginalia, and interstitial writing, it rearranges,
compounds, enfolds, and erodes the notion of center in textually fruitful
ways." I would say that the "center" includes the "I" of the essay; the genre
points out its own (continually evolving) structures and fictions, including
those of the self.
I have noticed that some students - not all, but a good portion - resist
the perceived mandate (and where does this come from?) to "write about
yourself" in my creative nonfiction classes, and they ask me what to write
about (a memoir backlash brewing?) . Classical essays provide great exam-
pies here - Montaigne and Woolf, Lamb a

tricky balance of hanging on to the languag
surrendering themselves to the act of es
that Montaigne isn't talking about himself
allowing that moment in his writing to tak
for death, then perhaps they can allow the
as well.
Danko: For many of the same reasons I'v

cal" Montaignean essay as partly born ou
keeping commonplace books, as well as re
ment of scientific method, up to and throu
reading of a few pages of Montaigne reveal
illustrate, accent his assertions. A kind of c
of proceeding-from-particulars, perhaps.
Briefly to go back to some points abou
Lukács points out that "the essential, the
the essay is not the judgment, as is the case
of judging"; Phillip Lopate quotes this in
ogy The Art of the Personal Essay , and it'
genre. As Lopate puts it, we can see the
around a given topic, coming up with a var
gle "yes" or one single "no," not necessarily
were only two sides of any given "argumen
nay polarization closes off conversation, dia
from "the middle" toward which I think
our voices.
When I read essays I love, I see what Wallace Stevens calls, in "Of
Modern Poetry," "the poem of the mind in the act of finding what will
suffice." Sometimes we get to "what suffices," sometimes not. When I
teach, I try not to ask my students questions with only "yes" or "no"
answers, or if I do, I try to ask "why" - please qualify, clarify, expand, say
more. And Kelley brings up how the form highlights, foregrounds its own
processes, lets the stitches show perhaps, as it enacts "its own (continually
evolving) structures and fictions, including those of the self." Montaigne,
as he presents example after example - from his reading, from his personal
life, from ancient and contemporary history - seems always to need to find
ground , precedence, for the various problems and questions he encounters,
as in "By Diverse Means We Arrive at the Same End" ["That Men by
1 62 Fourth Genre
Various Ways Arriv

some answer ex cat
unifying theory" t
Madden: An interes
mation" that barrag
talking about conti
respect the recogni
about, say, bloggin
do not regularly re
the "blogosphere"),
Lazar: I have a fairl

sound rather old-fa
a more interesting
form with precede
Doesn't everyone w
some of that back
to the world that
renaissance of Tatlers and Ramblers and London Observers.
Madden: But a lot seem like National Enquirers , too, and they likely have
received some influence from that notorious old rag, while it's unlikely
that many are consciously following the spirit of the eighteenth-century
London periodicals.
Matherly: Consciously following, no, but what was the spirit of the eigh-
teenth-century periodical? Coffeehouses were teeming with braggarts and
pseudo-intellectuals prepared to expend their coffee highs either verbally or
in print. Here is an opportunity to at least encourage students to see some
connection between that time and ours. Maybe we've run up against the
"periodical essay," yet another variation? I'm thrown back to thinking about
Mike s grounding of the essay in terms of particular historical contexts, and
Shannon s insistence that students should have some appreciation for the his-
tory of the essay if they are going to work within it. Comparing the blo-
gosphere of today to the "public sphere" of eighteenth-century London
seems like a fruitful comparison. What Kelley called the essay's "extensibil-
ity" reminds me that a history of the essay (classical or otherwise) will nec-
essarily include thinking about the experiments with it of every age.
Lazar: It's much about the contemporary audience.

rary audience is also multifaceted. I've read some ut
erudite and less autobiographical, that seemed to be
spirit of the age, as well as mirroring their times. A
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century periodicals was
we might think. Most of the periodical essays of the ea
tury aren't all that great, and have been deservedly
oblivion. Blogs are overwhelming in their sheer quantit
ing process emerges through word of mouth. Event
blogs that point us to the best blogs.
Madden: While we're thinking about periodical essa

mention William Hazlitt's exceptional "theoretical" essay
Essayists," which runs through the major British essay
to his time. Students (and professors) would do well to
duction to the people and styles important to the first
of the essay in England.
Matherly: You've just made me wonder: has the pr

periodical essay divided us in some ways from the rest
When I first began teaching workshops, getting stud
topical sorts of essays they were used to writing and in
for writing personal essays was a challenge. I found tha
letter writing in the first week of the course was a go
over the proscription against using "I" to denote the
them engage their readers with more intimacy. Th
way the belles-lettres tradition that our modern con
emerged from. Michelle and I have both used letters in
to introduce the genre, though she has really found th
the form.
Michelle Disler: I'm almost always drawn to letters

essay usually written without formal publication in
essay seems like the definition of the personal or classi
given its intimacy and spontaneity, which are hallmarks
selves take various forms, like public address, eulogy, or
paper) editor, the narrative or essay conveyed or impli
personal and originally unpublished letters always thril
spondence as essay.
1 64 Fourth Genre
I suspect my interes
revealing nature of th
ter seems to me so ide
mingling of public an
divulge. I think I may
subjectivity, its antisy
to "lay bare its proces
the essay generally, "b
this appearance of spo
creation of the self."
Access to private letters as published prose is the icing on the literary

cake of the essay, where greats like Virginia Woolf, Edna St. Vincent Millay,
and Anne Sexton make the private page their personal epistolary play-
ground. I didn't know until I discovered the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay
in a secondhand bookstore that Millay liked to garden, was a loving sister
and daughter and wife, and had more than her share of money troubles,
even while her wealthy financier husband was alive. She had been all sharp-
tongued sonneteer to me, a tough and tender speaker who ravished and
revolutionized the sonnet in twentieth-century American poetry. To think
she'd "rather lay a pipeline or dig a grave than write a letter" is astonishing,
given her buoyant letter-writing personality. "But on the whole - oh,
Jesus! - If ever I felt like a prostitute," she writes on the Chicago train about
a reading she'd just given, "it was last night. - I kept saying over & over to
myself while I was reading to them, 4 Never mind - it's a hundred & fifty
dollars.' - I hope I shall never write a poem again that more than five peo-
ple will like." She's a delight.
I felt much the same way as I read Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters.
I feel caught in a contradiction that Sexton performs all throughout the
pages: her letters are real, but her persona is not; her poetry is real, but her
letters are not; and her persona is real, but she is not. Which is it? Must it
be one or another? These letters have verve and nihilistic joy, and this is a
fierce and fearsome self-portrait - a contradiction Sexton would perhaps
refuse, then, just as suddenly, appreciate.
Danko: I'm wondering about how we need an ear sometimes, someone

just to listen, even an imagined audience, and how the epistolary essay
presupposes distance of some kind - geographical, temporal, emotional,
philosophical; how the audience is usually an audience of one (and one
that is known to the writer while a "regular" essay su

tion goes out to a larger, largely unknown audience
I think, too, of diaries (or journals, or notebooks), h
similarly to how Michelle envisions the epistolary essa
nal can show us a self-dialogue, a working-through of
out ideas, forms, without first showing a mess of a d
Virginia Woolf wrote about how keeping a journal
ligaments," as she puts it:
I am trying to tell whichever self it is that reads this [d

I can write very much better; & take no time over this;
the eye of man behold it. . . . But what is more to the
that the habit of writing thus for my own eye only
loosens the ligaments. Never mind the misses & the stum
a pace as I do I must make the most direct & instant sho
I encourage my students to keep ajournai mainly for

ing, but also to engage in a kind of self-dialogue, e
And when keeping a journal, we still may have an
(which itself can be tied to the creation of voice an
place where we can feel comfortable making a m
things, up.
Disler: Yes, reading an epistolary essay is like watching the writing sub-
ject take shape on the private space of an originally unpublished page
where the writer may feel particularly chatty or self-conscious or free to
write however and whatever she pleases. A portrait of the writer begins to
emerge amidst quotidian details of everyday life - almost, it seems, when
the writer herself isn't looking, but is simply engaged in corresponding
with another or recording her own thoughts in the privacy of a letter or
a journal as her own meager stay against time.
Matherly: How do most of you make these more private forms of writ-
ing valuable to students? Will they benefit more from practicing the form
or from reading theorists who have written about the essay?
Lazar: I think most theorists of the essay speak to the kinds of the essay
they write, and as such they're valuable, but limited. This is true of Lukács,
1 66 Fourth Genre
Adorno, DuPlessis:
about the possibilit
nature of the essay
when DuPlessis, wh
prose, says that the
a pronouncement
Burke, much of H
Fisher. Which is n
ments, contraction
The best theorist o
wavered, sought to
each essay. And I
Montaigne can be d
("Of Experience,"
respond to this, e
greatest resistance
pre-nineteenth-ce
approach this quest
some of your succ
Lakanen: Humor
The Almost Perfec
ality charming. Se
introduced him in
there's a lot more than humor involved in these writers' work: Milne's
comes from his genius ability to "make something out of nothing," and
Marquis often uses humor (as have dozens of other essayists) to make
downright subversive political statements:
We have always been compelled, and we shall be compelled for many

years to come, to be prudent, cautious, staid, sober, industrious, respect-
ful of established institutions, a model citizen. We Have not liked it, but
we have been unable to escape it. . . . Between the years of 92 and 102,
however, we shall be the useless, drunken outcast person we have always
wished to be.
Many students can easily engage with an image of a cantankerous old man
bellowing from his chair for more whiskey, and when they slow down to
examine what societal changes hes actually cal

amazed. This use of humor and persona com
Cynthia Ozick has said about the essay in "She:
Warm Body": that writing the essay is an act o
doesn't agree, ultimately, with an essayist s perspe
she will be seduced into the essayist's world for t
ing a piece.
Madden: Remembering that my first encounters with Montaigne were dif-

ficult, that I wasn't taken immediately with his (translated) writing, and
understanding that my students likely feel the same kind of resistance, I
always begin my creative nonfiction workshops with a few sample Montaigne
essays, along with the exhortation that "you can't be an essayist unless you
love Montaigne." This has held true, as far as I can tell. It's not that all of my
students grow to love the old Gascon, but the ones who turn out to be the
best writers do.
My habit, then, is to assign a few essays from the Great Dead every
week, running at least superficially through the canonical essayists, touch-
ing on some of their greatest hits. But just this past year I taught a senior
seminar on the History and Theory of the Essay. A few of the students
were creative writers I'd taught before, but most were not. A few signed
up for the class (which fulfills a major requirement) thinking of "essay" as
"article" (they were setting off for law school and wanted to strengthen
their legal writing), and one chose it from among the other offerings
because it would cost him the least. I had them buy only one book, Phillip
Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay. Most of the rest of the essays we read
(and we read a lot) were in the public domain, so I had them use the
anthology we've been working on at http: / /essays. quotidiana.org / .
The class was a great success, as far as I can tell. I think I made a few
"converts" to the "classical" essay (whether written hundreds of years ago
or very recently). Part of this was because the students were assigned to dis-
cover essays by "forgotten" essayists, mostly women, whose work is essen-
tially gone from our anthologies today. Some class favorites were Louise
Guiney (1861-1920), especially her "On the Delights of an Incognito"; Gail
Hamilton (1828-1896), with"Cheri"; Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928), espe-
cially "Crabbed Age and Youth" (see also Robert Louis Stevenson's earlier
essay of the same name); Vernon Lee (1856-1935), especially "Limbo" and
"About Leisure"; Alice Meynell (i847~I92¿), with "Shadows" and "The
Spirit of Place" standing out; Agnes Repplier (1855-1950), whose "Ennui"
1 68 Fourth Genre
and "Words" pleas

extremely useful to
ten by essayists the
offer them a samp
essayists whose wo
found some real gem
Lazar: Yikes, Pat, I h

with Montaigne it s
until you've had yo
Evans: To overcom
essays, I try to woo
read them, such as
which he discusses
Imagination" ["Of
among other things
I have found that t
cussion. The content
of "what the hell is
cussion of form, but
students express su
questions back to t
Do you trust him? W
method when he's a
get a rise out of t
because his is so virulent and therefore obvious.
Another essay I've had some success with is an excerpt from Eliza
Haywood's The Female Spectator that discusses the appropriate use of tea.
A male correspondent - in a letter to the editor possibly fabricated by
Haywood herself - complains of the way women indulge in and abuse this
substance of leisure, and Haywood responds with a measured argument,
not without levity. The letter allows her to bring up tensions between
men and women, women's roles in a growing capitalist system, and other
issues. The concept of tea as gateway drug is amusing for the students,
and the epistolary-yet-public form gets them thinking about essays as
conversation.
All of this does, I admit, take a certain amount of cheerleading. But I don't
think of it that way; I just try to get students to react to my enthusiasm
without demanding that they be positive in their r

times it takes students time to warm to Montaigne.
tion on him longer, I consider it a success, and tru
in the end.
Lazar: I think if students are engaged or charmed

gests, they are more willing to wade into what
English. I sometimes like to begin them with essay
ceits, such as Hazlitts "Of Persons One Would W
inquired if there was anyone that was hanged that
tion") or Landors "Petition of the Thugs for Tolerat
gious fraternity of Thugs . . .") or perhaps some e
Tatlers Mrs. Crackenthorpe (Mary Delariviere Manle
love the mystery of authorship) to go along wit
Spectator ("Effeminacy in the Army," "An Ugly A
Ram") and also, speak to the life: Lamb chortl
Benjamin s late tragic flight and his mysterious bri
of Woolf s moments of being in her essays . . .
Lakanen: Kelley s way of answering the "what the

question in broad strokes before students read has
I tell my students before they read the essays that
is ostensibly about her trip to buy a pencil and th
"The Death of the Moth" is, well, the death of a
to get that "what's going on" question out of th
dents to think about what else is going on in the e
has she chosen to write about such seemingly in
other ideas does she explore through these eve
mantra I attribute to you, David: "Essays are not s
So the focus of these class discussions is "To what
these stories?"
Matherly: I think we've all recognized the difficulty with teaching Montaigne.
Certainly, and this has happened without fail - -those times when students
have selected their own readings in my classes and have chosen to read
Montaigne - the feeling of having "discovered" him themselves makes
the bond stronger. Thinking back, my own introduction to him was rocky,
and it wasn't until I picked through an essay on my own that I began to
enjoy him.
170 Fourth Genre
One other thing that

ing the content of an
terms of the essayist s
we are to understand
the authors actual th
appreciation for the no
become (considering, f
and lifelong companion
contemporary essayist
Danko: In past work

Virgil" daunting, of c
tion. But people have o
and when he is writing
can be. And because h
his ideas about gender
can often hook into h
In composition and lit
have responded to th
Cannibals," "Of the Po
ation"], "Of Coaches." I
piece - how they move
cally controlled."
Students generally al
read; they like Shona
sona. A number of sele
have worked well, esp
a writer. Kenko gives u
I agree that students m
in their first experien
tion helps; they're no
the modern translation
can still find the langu
write in English. The
of the short passages r
(another structural essa
Lakanen: I second Mike

for resistant readers, o
more contemporary. When I taught a course on form,

the personal essay, I had students read from Screech's
that they thoroughly enjoyed Montaigne. I also eased
starting with shorter ones (some of their favorites wer
Laugh at the Same Thing" ["That We Laugh and Cry f
"How Our Mind Tangles Itself Up" ["That Our Mind
a Ready or Hesitant Delivery" ["Of Quick or Slow S
ing on to the lengthier and more complicated ones. "O
as a helpful intermediate essay, since it demanded more
its fairly easy for students to see his turning the mean
"civilization" on their heads, and it serves as a wonderf
political personal essay. ^
I've also found that some of the essays Mike and oth
work well, especially when students can find a con
content (Shonagon's "Hateful Things," Seneca's "On
same time, I reiterate on my syllabus that it's not nec
the content of an essay in order to find value in it. T
ask students most frequently about an essay is "What's
why?" Another version of the question is "How d
using the form of the essay?"
Matherly: Still, some writing instructors may feel pr

market or the contemporary sorts of nonfiction - ess
are being published currently, but feel completel
when teaching literature prior to the twentieth ce
some teachers prefer to tip the workshop in favor of
over readings. If other writing instructors experience
essays for this reason, I suggest allowing students t
and post responses on a discussion board. How do w
shop time?
Lakanen: This is always a tough issue to sort out, but

dents lead discussions of essays to the class in groups.
Art of the Personal Essay , we read and discussed seve
the first couple of weeks, and then I asked each group
essay from the anthology to work on. They read th
home and brought in notes about their first impressi
these notes with their group in class; they devoted at
side of class to reading the essay out loud as a group,
172 Fourth Genre
ment on or ask questio

to fine-tune their plan
I think having studen
sion board would work
use those boards as ac
to post their homewor
dents are actually read
And then, how do yo
Matherly: Usually only

spaces, but if it is im
them to respond to at
standard, I asked them
ally wrote much mor
space, at least in term
often than not, they
ter decisions about w
five minutes at the b
they'd made the week
was especially import
have assigned, and th
reading personal essay
coli notwithstanding .
Madden: Maybe the c

tious, too? (Chocolate
me, and this is what
of them agree by the
for teaching the class
connecting, humbly p
things that simply ca
exciting stories from t
heroes, or both.
One of the things that
is the classical essayist
ity to take a mundane,
said in "Of Experience,
things, if we could put
est miracles of natur
full of examples that students can read in one sitting,

by: Montaigne's "Of Thumbs," Lamb's "Chapter on
Death of the Moth," Alice Meynell's "Shadows
Bicycle and I," and hundreds more.
Maybe it's because I've lived a rather uneventful lif
gic to vainglorying, exaggerated dramas. I want st
what keeps them awake at night pondering, what tug
minds. As Alexander Smith wrote, "The world is e
essays." I figure it's my job to train students to hear t
it into a well-written ramble on, say, water fountains
trembling in its many forms, all subjects my studen
nated, to great success. 'm'

Michigan State University Press Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Michigan State University Press Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Roundtable: Teaching the Classical Essay

Many from creative living

With contemporary creative nonfiction dominating the attention of writ-

essayists of the past,

Patrick Madden: When I think about "teaching the classical essay," I

Shannon Lakanen: I like "the Mother Essay," though

Kelley Evans: In terms of genre lineage, it may be ea

Madden: I think the term essay itself has been bastardi

or "short story" or "p

Michael Danko: Seneca, whom Montaigne seems to quote every third

Montaigne; Seneca at times seems almost more Montai

Concepts of the self,

Lakanen: I keep return

Lazar: To speak to wha

Ago," we seem less fraught about these breaks in o

Lazar: The idea o

Evans: O. B. Hardison's comment seems to describe the essay as a way to

pies here - Montaigne and Woolf, Lamb a

Danko: For many of the same reasons I'v

Various Ways Arriv

Lazar: I have a fairl

Lazar: It's much about the contemporary audience.

Madden: While we're thinking about periodical essa

Matherly: You've just made me wonder: has the pr

Michelle Disler: I'm almost always drawn to letters

Access to private letters as published prose is the icing on the literary

Danko: I'm wondering about how we need an ear sometimes, someone

that is known to the writer while a "regular" essay su

I am trying to tell whichever self it is that reads this [d

I encourage my students to keep ajournai mainly for

We have always been compelled, and we shall be compelled for many

examine what societal changes hes actually cal

Madden: Remembering that my first encounters with Montaigne were dif-

and "Words" pleas

Lazar: Yikes, Pat, I h

without demanding that they be positive in their r

Lazar: I think if students are engaged or charmed

Lakanen: Kelley s way of answering the "what the

One other thing that

Danko: In past work

Lakanen: I second Mike

more contemporary. When I taught a course on form,

Matherly: Still, some writing instructors may feel pr

Lakanen: This is always a tough issue to sort out, but

ment on or ask questio

Matherly: Usually only

Madden: Maybe the c

full of examples that students can read in one sitting,

You might also like