Essay

The essay is a short prose work of free composition that expresses the author's individual impressions, reflections, and reasoning on a particular occasion, without claiming exhaustiveness or scientific systematicity. The genre was inaugurated by the Frenchman Michel de Montaigne with his collection Essais (1580), from whose title the term derives. The essay combines features of artistic, publicistic, and scholarly prose; its marks are subjectivity, associativeness, freedom of thought, and a confiding tone. In world literature the essay was developed by Francis Bacon, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jorge Luis Borges, and Umberto Eco. In Ukrainian literature, vivid examples of the essay belong to Yevhen Malaniuk, Yurii Shevelov (Sherekh), Oksana Zabuzhko (Chronicles from Fortinbras), and Yurii Andrukhovych (Disorientation on Location).