{"product_id":"the-essay-at-the-limits-9781350235373","title":"The Essay At the Limits","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the hands of such writers as Rebecca Solnit, Claudia Rankine, David Shields, Zadie Smith and many others, the essay has re-emerged as a powerful literary form for tackling a fractious 21st-century culture. \u003ci\u003eThe Essay at the Limits \u003c\/i\u003ebrings together leading scholars to explore the theory, the poetics and the future of the form. The book links the formal innovations and new voices that have emerged in the 21st-century essay to the history and theory of the essay. In so doing, it surveys the essay from its origins to its relation to contemporary cultural forms, from the novel to poetry, film to music, and from political articles to intimate lyrical expressions.  The book examines work by writers such as: Theodor W. Adorno, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Annie Dillard, Brian Dillon, Jean Genet, William Hazlitt, Samuel Johnson, Karl Ove Knaussgaard, Ben Lerner, Audre Lorde, Oscar Wilde, Michel de Montaigne, Zadi\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn outstanding collection of cutting-edge criticism and scholarship on a historically undervalued genre. The contributors offer fresh and diverse perspectives on traditional approaches to the essay as well as provocative new ways to reimagine the genre’s literary and cultural significance as we move deeper into a digital future. The essay needs and deserves more rigorous studies like this one. * Robert Atwan, Series Editor, The Best American Essays *\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Essay at the Limits\u003c\/i\u003e, like the Roman god Janus, has a double vision: a set of eyes look back at the beginnings of the essay, its etymologies, genealogies and traditions; the other pair observe the essay’s relevance in the 21st century as “a powerful literary form,” as the blurb puts it, in a contemporary world riddled with post-truth. This double vision equips the editor and the contributors with critical foresight. * Fourth Genre *\u003cbr\u003eMario Aquilina’s selection of [examined work] indicates that he has his finger on the pulse of the essay today. Yet Aquilina, like the authors contributing to this collection, also has the ability to connect contemporary zeitgeist to the history of the essay genre. * The Cambridge Quarterly *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNotes on Contributors Preface Suggested Reading  Mario Aquilina (University of Malta) Thinking the Essay at the Limits  \u003cb\u003e Part 1: The Essay and the World\u003c\/b\u003e   1.     Erin Plunkett (University of Hertfordshire, UK) The Essay as Phenomenology   2.     James Corby (University of Malta) An Essay on the Post-Literary   3.     Neil Badmington (Cardiff University, UK) Brief Scenes: Roland Barthes and the Essay   4.     Nicole B. Wallack (Columbia University, USA) The ‘Subversive Possibilities’ of the Essay for Public Intellectuals  5.     Joseph Tabbi (University of Bergen, Norway) Is Writing All Over, or Just Dispersed? Digital Essayism in TRINA, A DESIGN FICTION    \u003cb\u003e Part 2: The Essay and the Self\u003c\/b\u003e   6.     Ivan Callus (University of Malta) Tone and the Essay   7.     Jennifer Spinner (Saint Joseph’s University, USA) What the Periodical Press Made Possible: Women Essayists in the Eighteenth Century  8.     Rachel Baldacchino (University of Malta) Otherness and the Essay in the Pacifist Work of Vernon Lee  9.     Aaron Aquilina (Lancaster University, UK)  Margins and Marginality: Jean Genet and the Queer Essay  10.  Michael Askew (University of East Anglia, UK) The Essay and the ‘I’: Eliot Weinberger’s Transformation of the Authorial Self        \u003cb\u003ePart 3: The Essay, Form and the Essayistic \u003c\/b\u003e   11.  R. Eric Tippin (Palm Beach Atlantic University, USA) At the Limits of \u003ci\u003eFixité\u003c\/i\u003e: The Essay and the Aphorism   12.  Jason Childs (Independent scholar) Assaying the Novel   13.  Allen Durgin (Columbia University, USA) Wallace Stevens, Audre Lorde and the Queer Performativity of the Essay    14.  Maria Frendo (University of Malta) Transgression as Transcendence: Essayistic Poetics in Selected Works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Joseph Vella   15.  Bob Cowser Jr. (St. Lawrence University, USA) Hersey, Resnais and Representing Hiroshima: Toward an Essayistic Historiography","brand":"Bloomsbury Publishing PLC","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52084836696407,"sku":"9781350235373","price":35.38,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781350235373.jpg?v=1762207308","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-essay-at-the-limits-9781350235373","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}