 Hello and welcome back to NPTEL, the National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning, a joint venture of Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science. We are in the lecture series of language and literature, specially targeted for students of Indian Institutes in India. I am Krishna Barua, I teach literature in Indian Institute of Technology. We are in a lecture series of English language and literature and presently we are in the module on literature genres, which is module 4 of our lectures. Let us have a recap of what we have done in the previous lectures. Genre if we have seen it is nothing but a mode of classification of different works of art, literature, music, any other creative pursuits. It helps you to identify and to see how each of these genres act within their own domain. The genres for our own classification we have divided it into novel, poetry, drama, autobiography, short story, essay and biography. In lecture 1 if you remember we had done on the novel, on its technique, on its form, content, evolution of the history of the novel as such. Lecture 2 was on poetry and what are the poetic devices, their rhythms, their comparisons, ornamentations and the main key players in the field. In lecture 3 we went into the performative arts that is drama and drama as a literary genre which becomes an art form too and how it had acted collaboratively as well as collectively and how it is an enactment of life before an audience. Yes, so now we come to lecture 4 which is the essay and in this lecture 4 we will see how the essay and other literary forms are interconnected. If we see the way that we have examined the other genres of the novel or of the poem we see that the novel it is narrated you tell a story and you words are used to create imaginary persons and events and the story is narration. At the same time we will find in the play there is interaction in a drama and in the essay you will find that all these 3 genres or these 4 genres almost are mixed up. It performs all those things in probably in different different levels but words are addressed directly to the reader and when we have this we have a essay. So, in the essay when we do this for many students of engineering streams many of you are asked to write an essay before the admission process goes on to different universities and many of you come and ask me what do we have to write. Maybe this genre will help you to see the structuring of how an essay is being written, what was the evolution of the term and how this I mean this genre really evolved. So, if you want to just see it in its true form it is a type of non-fictional prose literature. Yes, it is analytic it is interpretive and it is of critical literary composition. If you want to define a novel then define an essay then you find that it deals with mostly literary composition. It can be a vehicle of literary and social criticism, it can become a documentary or satiric, it may be an editorial, it may be a book review, it may be about a person, it may be a journal piece. So, these are all essays you are very familiar with the essays I know and it may be a documentary, it may be humorous but one thing is important is that there is the subjective view that a person who writes gives a subjective view that is his own personal view on history or on philosophy or on literature whether it is current affairs, literary criticism or science. Well, let us see what people have to say about this genre as such the essay right. This is what Aldo Hasley said one damn thing after another a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything right and Virginia Woolf one of the most innovative novelist of the 20th century said all almost all essays begin with a capital I whether it is directly or indirectly I think I feel right. So, this is a note to be seen Francis Bacon one of the key players in this genre he said this is essays or dispersed meditation whatever you think whatever you are saying may be you are putting it into print and Samuel Johnson another great classic essayist he said it is a loose sally of the mind interesting is it not. Now, let us see that the essay is a form of literature many essays are not literary if we see it as literature as a genre from in the domain of literature let us see how it fits into this niche many are completely practical piece of writing it may be a scientific treatise to design to report or explain or make a case for something right. Those essays usually go about their business in a no nonsense matter of fact way. So, they are likely to be systematically organized when you see that it is not literary it deals with the purpose with the case then you know that the organization needs more methodology does not it. It has to be factually detailed it has to be built up with examples with evidences closely reasoned and plainly written this is one important thing which is an essay if it is a scientific essay or it is about a case report the elaboration and ornamentation as in creative writing own do. So, it has to be something which is plainly written clearly briefly or may be very with very transparent evidence. Assess you can look beyond the immediate purpose also George Owen another great in this field for example, wanted to make political writing into art. So, he was known as a political essayist right we have Edmund Bach also in America who made his essays as a part of his political credo right and George Owen he made his commitment to the goal was in fact, so strong that he could not do the work of writing even a long magazine article if it were not also an aesthetic experience. So, he found in the essay the right tool for giving expression to whatever he felt as a social observer as a political observer and analyst. Another aspect because he was a novelist he also wanted to create the impact pleasure this is one thing which we have to see in literature most of you are doing this courses in literature one thing that we have to understand when we read literature or when we study literature it is the way that we want to appreciate right and appreciation comes from a groundwork of its genres or of its grammar or its vocabulary right like in music if you do not have the actual understanding of the vocabulary of music you do not understand or you do not appreciate the richness of a musical musical pleasure. So, he also wanted to create as Orwell had said pleasure in the impact of one sound on another in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. So, you see this links between prose between creative writing as well as that of a story right and many people say that we cannot distinguish between the essay and short story of course, there is a lot of difference between a short story and an essay because we will be doing that in the next lecture and that is exactly what he achieved. So, when we look into this some essays are not out to say in the world at all. So, they do not have a purpose they do not have a social and in itself sometimes they are indifferent to immediate circumstance or practical ends, but yet they are essays they may write of anything of why you like to eat a special sort of food or why your you do not like a person. So, they have a point to make every essays does, but they are not bent on persuading us to believe something or to do something about the world. So, it has no didactic purpose as such instead of rousing us to action such writers may lead us to contemplation or even to idle imagination. So, this is another form of the essay we have which is sort of a meditation or it leads us to think right. Virginia Woolf again says that about the purpose of the essay that the principle which controls it is simply that it should give us pleasure. The desire which impels us when we take it from the shelf is simply to receive pleasure everything in an essay must be subdued to that end right. So, this is a core point that C is emphasizing well. So, let us now look how the essay performs or what are the characteristics of the essay in its pure form. Like any work of expository prose this is a prose which exposes right it is a prose which exposes this link again with that of performing art because it is almost like it tells you what the what the picture is about. Therefore, it uses words to establish ideas that address directly by the essays to the reader right. Thus the essential quality is persuasion just now we had done that an essays can even without a purpose he can write he does not need to persuade, but merely we find that most of the essays that are written alright are deliberated by this essential quality by of persuasion. Each of the form is capable of using the elements techniques or even strategies of the other forms when we have seen the novel the drama the poetry it may also be narrative or dramatic or poetic in form. Therefore, the essay again has the flexibility of being dramatic it can be poetic it can be also narrative or an essay may involve a combination of the form. So, it is interesting is it not. So, when you try to write it in the essay form you can take in all the other genres and try to experiment with that form, but in its pure form the essay explicitly attempts to persuade us of something by means of an appeal it is almost like an argumentative prose right. When you are in a debate or you are in a form of a discussion then you always try to put the prose and cones before you do not we and then first we introduce the theme then again we expose it then we give evidence to it and therefore, it is almost like it proceeds in a as of a sort of argument and it is addressed directly to the reader there is no in between right. So, the direct I mean the response is to the not to the director to the reader and you find the reader and the essayist has a sort of a dialogue going on. Therefore, if we look into this let us see what are the elements of the essay it does not have any rules by the way if I tell you straight in a direct way we find that yet if we look into the elements of the essay as we have looked into the elements of narration into elements of the poetic technique or of drama let us see this genre does it have its own elements or not. Yes it has a specific purpose as I told you just now and essay is a relatively short written it is not a long winded you know sort of diatribe right that articulates supports and develops an idea or claim it aims to explain something complex or something simple not necessarily complex, but suppose there is something complex then you have to develop the idea. Therefore, it entails analysis and argument suppose a scientific treatise or suppose a literary criticism right you have to first give what is your thesis about what is your purpose about the tone about and then the analysis and argument will come automatically. To achieve this end an essay must incorporate four elements. So, please keep this in mind when you are writing your SOPs or you are writing an essay when you are going into admission into universities right here you find that you should have an appropriate tone a clear thesis a coherent structure an ample or appropriate evidence yes. So, it has to follow this almost in a logical sequence well. So, to understand what a real essay is let us go back into the history of the essay as such shall we go back to the 16th century right we go to the friends connection to France. So, we have seen from what we have discussed just now that the essay is at least a very flexible form and that it has been ever so ever since it originated with the 16th century friends writer Montaigne yes we will be doing autobiography in the last lecture and you will find that whatever you might ask later that why is it that the essay if it is in the personal essay why does not it fall into autobiography or not it does yes, but then that is again another genre you have to consider Montaigne he used it as a means of exploring himself his essays were very personal and his ideas about human experience and his essays were in a sense a means of thinking on paper all his thoughts were put on paper musing introspection of trying things out in writing and we will find this informal method of writing right it is not the formal method which is later being developed by Johnson etcetera, but that is informal quality by calling them essays this is the French term a term he derived from the French verb essayer which means to try to attempt and the meaning of this to attempt to whether to take out to we know all right. So, the term essay has since come to be used as a catch all for non-fictional prose work of limited length. So, you have to remember that the length has to be considered it cannot go on and on as in a novel right the Aristotle had said the same thing when he said about drama it has to be of a considerable length a drama a performance cannot go on forever can it right, but at the same time we have in the essay it is short and it is of limited length well. So, as we have seen Montaigne when he published his essays and the personal voice came into existence personal experience and he used the essay as a means of self discovery this is where just an extract from his essays and this is how it begins first day of March 1580 this book was written in good faith reader it was a collection of a essays right it wants you from the outset that in it I have said myself no goal, but a domestic and private one this reminds me almost like Rousseau's confession right and you will find when you will be doing autobiography you will find that that peremptory notice there that I am going to say whatever I want to say. Thus reader I myself the matter of my book you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject right. So, a humor is there well coming from the French connection let us go into some early European critises which were close to what the essay writing genre is about. Early writing such as Tose of Plato the Greeks remember Cesaro, Marcus, Aurelis, Roman, Seneca, Plota, Kenlotha English do anticipate the form and tone of the essay. The influence of the essay and of genres lied to it such as portraits and sketches first in Italy then in France and through French influence in most of Europe from the 16th century. Well this tone of the essay in Lotha is not English my name it is German. So, as we have seen Francis Bacon in the 16th century he called the essay as a recreation he called it as a recreation of my other studies I am doing it as a by as something which is an alternate form of a hobby right. This proverbs which come with it if the hill will not come to Muhammad will go to the hill this is of boldness right. So, here we have Francis Bacon who is known as one of the pioneers of English essay right 16th century and he had written almost more than 100 essays the first one with 38 essays the second one essays of councils it was published in 1625 and then specially his aphorisms are very well known reading make it the full man conference already men and writing on exact men when he wrote about subjects like of studies of boldness you just see of just the amount of you know topics that he wrote a wide range of styles he had from the plain to the epigrammatic his sayings have become epigrammatic right and almost as if whatever Bacon had said had stuck dawn from both public and private life from a number of different angles weighing on one argument against another use of aphorisms and phrases became the stylistic stylistic technique of essay writing right of envy of love of married single life whatever you want you will get it here. So, let us see what he had written of love the stage is more beholding to love than the life of man for as to the stage love is ever matter of comedies and now and then of tragedies, but in life without much mitchif sometimes like a siren sometimes like a fury you may observe that amongst all the great and worthy person there is not one that had been transported to the mad degree of love. So, you find it is detailed study analysis is also there humor is also there and also it has become by product from one thing it has become more serious it is more academic right. Therefore, while we look into this we see that stylistically the essays distinctive features are is this descriptive imagery yes as in all literature we have to see how it is being expressed it is aphoristic quality just now as epigrammatic style somewhere the essays sticks in the mind because it is brief probably because of the way that they want to state a case or a problem and it is conversational tone and vocabulary and it has a significant vocabulary this is what I had told you earlier like when you write an essay you have to understand it is a form of a dialogue right and when it is a form of a dialogue you have to also take view with age to vocabulary and the tone. So, while we see this Montaigne and Bacon in fact illustrates the two distinct kind of essays the informal and the formal Bacon you find Francis Bacon he set the tone for the formal and the informal was personal intimate relax some of the greatest exponents of the informal essay are Jonathan Swift, Charles Lamb, William Hesley, Thomas Tiquancy, Mark Twain, James Thurber, E. B. White. Jonathan Swift I will just give you some examples it is not possible to give all the examples here of the essays Jonathan Swift in the 17th century and early part of 18th century he was one who was very concerned about the social conditions and even though you know him as Gulliver as the author of Gulliver travels he had written pamphlets as well Gulliver travels is also a satire if you know about it and you know that in the pamphlets and the essays that he wrote he became embroiled in political religious and social issues. The essay on a modest proposal I am just giving you one example where he had written about the preventing the children of poor people in iron and from being a burden to their parents or country and for making them beneficial to the public right. So, it was more with the purpose with the welfare of the people in mind that he had written his pamphlets equally spontaneous and whimsical where the summons of John Dunn I hope you remember in the genre on poetry we had done John Dunn as one of the great innovators in metaphysical poetry right. He was also well known for his essays specially his sermons and with a paradoxically solemn tone right where we find something which was so modern so strange so difficult to take and at the same time we find on the other side his religious summons and the first English essays many have said was the metaphysical poet A. Cowley in the 17th century even earlier than Bacon author of several discourses by way of essays. So, in doing so so what do we examine in an essay right its qualities its characteristics what type it is whether it is lyrical whether it is dramatic whether it is personal whether it is formal whether it is informal and the definitions what definitions does it intend to bring forth whether it is concise clear authoritative whether meanings have been supported with illustrations and evidences whether there is organized sequence or not whether their development has gone as a natural flow from the point of origin or is it that it has diverted if it has do do you consider it an essay or not yes I believe you can the laws if any of induction and deduction. So, if you consider taking this laws from science from the particular to the to the general from the general to the particular the laws of induction and deduction can be applied in analyzing how a essay an essay develops right. So, coming from Bacon from Jonathan Swift we see that earlier this examples of essays which were being written we had Robert Berton's book the Anatomy of Malinkali more of therapeutic influence and procedures that he wrote in 1621 and Sir Thomas Brown religio medici in a brief discourse of the urns in 1658. So, this way very well known treatises or you can say they are not literary essays, but they were more on the way that one can conduct one's life physical life as well as moral life well. So, in the 18th and 19th centuries the essay was one of the it was in the 18th century therefore, when we did novel we have seen 18th century the novel also came into prominence because of the industrial revolution here too we find that the essay was one of the leading genres in French and English journalism. Journalism is closely allied to the essay important contributions to its development were made by Joseph Edison, Richard Steele, Henry Fielding, Johnson, Samuel Johnson, Walter Lessing, Horder right where a new literary journal came during this period what was that the periodical essay right. So, this was when if any literary form is the particular creation and the particular mirror of the Augustan age in England it is the periodical essay the age of the 18th century what is called a periodical essay was first of all given by Steele as the Tatla he first introduced the Tatla which was a journal, but it appeared and issues were brought out it went on and Richard Steele was again being assisted by Joseph Edison the Tatla was discontinued discontinued on first March 1711 the spectator was published and it continued until 6th December 1712. All the material of the Tatla was supported purported by Steele to be based upon discussions in the four famous coffee houses well. So, this the Tatla and the spectator and Joseph Edison and Richard Steele right they they are landmark in the in this genre of essay writing the spectator papers were written by a persona ok. So, he is not research Steele or Joseph Edison. So, the persona was the spectator he would observe everything right what were the things that they observe as they said the false outs of life to pull off the disguises of cunning vanity affectation recommend a general simplicity in our dress or discourse or behavior it was almost the conditioning of the mind of the 18th century right. So, it was addressed mostly to the middle class yes and there was the style if you note the style of the spectator and in the Tatla you find that it is almost like colloquial speech it is like a conversational style dealing with morals and manners where taking up from there we find there is something very different in Dr. Samuel Johnson who was more erudite and more or more of a classicist and he has been regarded as the greatest essayist of all time right. He introduced he published the Rambler on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 1750 to 1752 2 years and it totals to about 208 articles it was Johnson's most consistent and sustained work though similar in name to preceding publications such as the Tatler and the spectator he made his periodical unique by changing the style which was not conversational not so much based on colloquial style, but using a style of prose which was very elevated more academic and the most popular publication of the day were written in the common of the people whereas, the Rambler was written in elevated prose his writings in the Rambler considered to be neoclassical and was written primarily for the rising middle class of the 18th century well you just see he also uses the persona of the Rambler as a dissonant still use the persona of the spectator who observes and watches criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense the power invention has been conferred by nature upon view and the labour of learning those sciences which may by mere labour be obtained is too great to be willingly endured you see the style of writing. So, it is academic it is almost like a academic discourse this was in 18th century coming as a byproduct of this we find Charles Lamb the most lovable person in English literature he is supposed to be the most lovable figure and is the most engaging personal essayist of all time. If you read his essays of earlier he you will find that you enjoy every bit of it right there is nothing serious about it yet at the same time you know that there is a wheat and a difference sensitivity which he has tried to brown bring in ironic wheat in lamb which is very graceful it is not harsh man is a gaming animal he must always be trying to get the better in something or other in the essays of earlier again this is the persona which is being taken right like we have the remla we had the spectator here also earlier he is the persona he uses and he began publishing this at essays in the London magazine later of course, it was taken because of his popularity in recollection inventing the persona of earlier allowed lamb to be shockingly honest and to gain a playful distance for self examination the essays touched upon a wide range of compelling subjects from the deliciously humorous please try to read this essay dissertation upon a rose pick to the poignantly reflective New Year's Eve which is more meditative more mellow yet collectively they also comprise a fascinating personal memoir if we go into autobiography we will find that it is almost reaching the memoir of its age pseudonyms disguise of a liar both writing in the beginning of 19th century if we talk of Charles name we talk of also William Hesley right Hesley's essays from 1778 to 1830 near about was he was one of the great masters of the miscellaneous essay right displaying a keen intellect and a very acute sensibility and a wide scope of interest and knowledge it showed a varied scope his best known work is the spirit of the age collection of portraits of his contemporary specially you know on Charles lamb he wrote his topics on writers writing on painters painting actors acting characters from as seen in daily life on going on a journey you will find everything there Heslin on the fear of death this is an excerpt perhaps the best go for the fear of death is to reflect that life as a beginning as well as an end there was a time when we were not this gives us no concern. So, you see almost introspective prose at the same time philosophical well. So, the essay was the predominant form used by the romantics we come to the 19th century right specially by Hain, Imersen, Taro, American romantics in their polemical writings on philosophy aesthetics it was in English teacher that the essays sank as deepest roots as exemplified in the work of Thomas Carlisle, Victorians William Heslin we had just done Matthew Arnold in the 19th century Larry Bellock, G. K. Cesternan Cesternan in the 20th in the best of the work they improvise a covert dialogue with a general reader yes. So, this participation this interaction with the reader right and you find that it is very interesting and it is very very somewhere very very appealing the dialogue that goes on between the essayist and the reader when we look into the great essayist of American in the 19th century who can forget Imersen's nature essays on nature which became the inspiration of so many environmental writers from Taro to that of John Moore. The first canonical work of U.S. literature to unfold a theory of nature and this theory on nature was written by Imersen then Taro's Walden beautiful book beautiful essays has been defined as a work of nature writing influenced by again Imersen right coming again towards the end of the beginning of the 20th century and the end of the 19th century we find Mark Twill known for his novels on Tom Sower and Huckleberry Finn, but he was a serial comic journalist too and you find that what he had written essays on what is meant advice to you and awful German language lots of humor in windows irony and you find all the art of essay writing in its best on the decay of the art of lying in this advice to you to one line which has become an aphorism always obey your parents when they are present tongue in cheek humor. This joiner therefore we have seen also became the favorite tool of traditionalist of the 18th and 19th centuries having day such as Edmund Bach and Samuel Taylor Caldorich Edmund Bach I had mentioned earlier a political analyst political observer and therefore his essays on the political freedom and on a political governance where really looked upon who looked to the short provocative as as the most potent means of educating the masses yes. If we go to Scotland it is not that we have ignored Scotland we have Robert Louis Stevenson the great novelist who had written Treasure Island if you remember, but as an essayist you find he has irrepressible humor just like in Mark Twill yes. So, in some of this essays that we have done we have seen that somewhere wheat and humor does play a part right when he had written about Samuel Pippes an Apology for Idlers in the South seas about the Pacific and all of this specially Stevenson's essays were marked by very shrewd observations irrepressible humor and a mark of a literary genius well. So, what is we see from here we saw that this formal essay is impersonal systematic and expository significant writers of this type include Joseph Edison, Mill, Matthew Arnold, Johnson, Walter Peter, Emerson, Henry David Thoreau in the later half of the 20th century if we go the formal essays become more diversified in subject unless tightly in tone and language and the sharp division between the two forms has tended to disappear. So, let us see how the essay has been used as argument at the heart of all essays is the idea of persuasion we have seen that you have to pursue it the reader because this is the dialogue that is going on between the reader and the essays. So, this argument if essays are admittedly out to make a case for something a point has to be established together with its supports with supportive material. I can just give you an example of D. H. Lawrence well known novelist British novelist and his essay on coxshire omen and henshire men in the essay coxshire omen and henshire men Lawrence has taken a very strong position on the crucial aspect of modern life. His is not a popular position, but rather than judging the essay in the light of current public opinion we should try to make the piece of in its own terms. If we see the essay as a story narrative essay the author becomes a narrator a storyteller who reports directly to us on persons and events I have known this person this is how he has told me that. So, it is a different from the short story even though there is persuasive demands in dimension to the narrative essay it is best approach first of all through its narrative elements right, but the narrative essay differs from the story how because it is a kind of record of what the event or situation it does not tell a story as a story is told in a short story. The story told in an essay may be highly personal or as impersonal as a journalistic story or current events whatever reports that you get in newspapers do not we. Then it all almost sometimes becomes an essay form here an example from Nora Ephron the whole astray this is how it becomes an story by itself I once heard a swell story about sorry about Gary Cooper. So, in this essay Ephron what does he do is concerned with an event he has a story to tell her purpose like that of any narrative essayist is to offer an interpretation of the story right, an interpretation that uses the story as a means of commenting on some aspect of experience. Another by E. B. White very well known essayist on spring notes on spring time and on anything else that comes to mind of an intoxicating nature there is considerable doubt at this writing that my hog has been bred all those he has been keeping company here you find it is almost like vineyards which goes jump from one image to another almost post modern in the way that the essay has been brought in. So, this becomes very flexible in the hands of modern essayist well. So, when we are looking into this structure therefore, the principles of design and a coherent structure if we try to say it like any literary text and I said needs to have a beginning yes either a beginning which is like an introduction or a middle or a body in which you develop it or an ending or conclusion each of these parts has a distinct function patterns of thought are being also developed personal may be familiar may be intimate subjective friendly conversational voice. Now, this voice which we had done in novel there is always an eye in there say is it the first person second person third person. So, it is the first person mostly a voice shaping the text and fashioning a role for the reader as a Milgen Johnson had remarked that essay is an irregular indigested piece not a regular and orderly performance right yeah. So, in a literary essay however, it is different the principle form of support is analogy we come to literary criticism right or in Wordsworth and Coleridge when they brought out different new methods of how to read poetry. Other kinds of essay may resort to statistical evidence like we had done in any other which is not a literary essay expert testimony and other such non-literary appeals, but here in a literary essay essays of John Dryden mark the beginning of English literary criticism well. So, the essay has flourished in the 20th century we have seen and prominent prose writers poets philosophers have turned to this genre in order to popularize the assignments of the natural sciences. It comes as a editorial it may come as a feature story a critical study even an excerpt for our book that period we are talking about now is not it in the 20 there was a sense of direction in the essay we have seen that all the forms whether it is informal that the detective or the humorous partly by the rise of journalism by the rise of media yes, because there is more people have less time to spend reading and therefore, you get like the growth of the industrial revolution in the 18th century people had more larger time. So, they could read an novel here essay is something short of limited and everything that can be said can be said in a very short form in a brief form shooting an elephant by George Orwell is been has been regarded as a classic example of an essay which is journalism part creative as well as realistic and also personal. We have seen Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf and Charles DuBois mastered the essay as a form of literary criticism when we look into this field where we find the essay taking its own form. T. S. Eliot's After Strange Gods in 1934 and other especially traditional individual talent and others that attempted to reinterpret and re-define culture established the genre as the most fitting to express the gentle tradition at odds with the democracy of the new world. So, this is happening a lot has been happening different things with it and there are number of essays who feel that the essay is in the mille lyrical form. Let us see even Bohels right when we did when we will do autobiography we will find that his essays can be termed as short fiction it can be termed as autobiographical fiction it can be also termed as essays where in one essay Bohels and I he Argentinian writer beautiful magic realism he uses. So, he used his tone and the way that he presents the essay is very very different from the way the others have done. If you go to French in the later part of the 19th century the beginning of the 20th century we have Andrew and he wrote short works early in his career based on his own experience and combines in charity with elegance. So, it has become more sophisticated the essay an example is straight is the gate and in the collection of essays autumn leaves we find memories and personal observation very elegant prose and beautiful ways of taking this genre and expanding it. Well, while we are talking of literary criticism we see that the essays specially in the realm of literary criticism is very noteworthy. T. S. Eliot's tradition and in the individual talent wise has become almost a essay which has become almost a bible of modern literature. Eliot asserts that tradition as used by the poet is not a mere reputation of the work of the immediate past rather it comprise the whole of European literature from Homer to the present. He had also written essays on notes towards the definition of culture in 1948 which was a redefinition of what is culture. We see again going on the realm of of Bakhtin in his 1941 essay epic and the novel what I am trying to concentrate over here that the essay became a tool for literary criticism and people could take this form this genre as a form of theorizing on interpretation of the text. We have George Orwell's essay inside the well Whale 1940 is an essay in three parts written about English literature in the 1920s and 1930s mostly about postcolonial literature. Then we have what is an author by Michael Foucault, then the death of an author by Roland Words, French literary critics who have brought in new trends in interpretation of the text, the postmodern text and also the death of the author almost how the author is being relegated to the background. When we have seen Emerson Toro how they had used nature as a form of their preoccupation with nature and they had found the essay as the most useful tool for expressing their views. A modern novelist we find who used the essay form John Robert Falls and he has written huge collection of essays on nature. There is the tree, weeds, bugs, Americans, the blinded eye, shipwreck, islands, land, the nature of nature and you find his passion of landscapes and wild nature. He had seen in France, Greece, England, Dorset, land ridges all this has been brought out in his essay. He is known for as a very well known novelist the French lectinants women. Well, so we come to the end of this lecture on essay not before ending let us see with the ease of access and publishing what the essay has come into. We have seen that the blogs which are here entered the domain of the worldwide map do not you think the blogs are different form of essays that are being written, forums, chat rooms all these are the ways that the essay has been expended. Digital media therefore has given new dimension to existing forms of expression. The material is the world itself and life the way may well make this the golden age of the essay do not you think so right. So, discussion we will have to see this what are the essays distinctive features stylistically, what is the difference between the journal article and an essay do you think there is a difference you can divide it into different informal form and whether it is humorous whether it is academic. Examine the key writers who use the essays a form of literary criticism points to examine when you will be writing your own essays. The tone as in everyday life your audience situation and purpose should save your tone whom you are addressing how you are going to compose and a clear thesis has to be there what theme it is an ample or appropriate evidence has to be there support has to be given where your claims are valid and while writing an essay therefore, you write a statement with an introduction that explains the topic use linkers to introduce your ideas and to make additional points choose the points and group them into paragraphs. So, the paragraphs have to systematically arrange give the points for the topic or the advantages it has to be clear methodical give the points against the topic or the disadvantages sum up the arguments and give your conclusion. The key source text in this lecture was Robert souls and Nancy R. Comley's elements of literature and some of the encyclopedias the English essay and essays of Walker and let me end with this again quote by Virginia Woolf when she says of all forms of literature the essay is the one which list calls for the use of long words mind you note that the principle which controls it is simply that it should give pleasure the triumph is the triumph of style for it is only by knowing how to write that you can make use in literature of yourself that self which while it is essential to literature is also its most dangerous antagonist never to be yourself and yet always that is the problem. Thank you. Thank you.