Essay Literature

[Stella Kreuter]

Im a postgraduate M.Sc. student at a university studying math. Currently I need to write some essay/assignment (about 10 pages) for a seminar where we revisit already published work and describe it in more detail.

By asking other students about their essay I noticed a great difference in the amount of cited literature. While I use over 30 different resources, most of my fellow students only cite a handful of resources besides their main resource.

Now, it is clear that the quality of literature might vary, and that 30 redundant resources and/or unreviewed resources can be considered as 'bad' resources and sloppy research. But that's not exactly what I mean.

In fact, half of my literature comes from an extensive research on the problem's history and related work (and almost all the literature had been published and reviewed in some way or the other). The other half mainly consists of my 'main' resource for the seminar and some books explaining some higher Matrix calculus and other basics (like the volume of a d-Sphere) which I used to explain the 'main' resource in detail.

Some of the literature I use has been cited in my original 'main' resource. Is it common practice to just cite them again (which leads to drastically more literature)? Or do I only refer to my main resource even if the statement comes from some other paper?

While I love knowledge about the history and related work to a problem it is also much easier than explaining the core of the problem. Do teachers find this stuff interesting at all? I believe teachers are normally very familiar with the problem. My concern is that they are only interested in theory and proofs and might find literature reviews boring. (I did explain the core of the problem as it is important, but I would have done it in more detail if I had spared about a page of history and review.)

The quick answer is yes. Pertinent literature is meant to support your position and build your story. The amount of literature cited usually reflects how deeply and how comprehensively a topic was examined. However, I should say that the literature cited must be highly relevant to be considered as a valid one. It will not be a good practice to pad the cited works to simply give an impression of in-depth research. Experienced readers of academic work will be able to tell if the amount of literature cited actually helps your cause.

You will, as you say, need to omit redundant sources and severely limit or omit unreviewed sources. With those caveats, more is generally better as more research suggests more learning. Yes, professors notice.

However, your paper must include your own thoughts and analysis. A cut-and-paste paper, where every sentence includes a citation, is not plagiarism, but it's not scholarly work, either. I'd assign such a paper an unsatisfactory grade. Use your sources to establish the background of the problem or topic. Then say what you have analyzed about the problem. So to address your question, you must address the core problem, whatever it is. You can't skip it with a lengthy lit. review.

In general, you must cite, and read the original sources. So, if B cites A, and you want to cite A, you must read A. Your professors are likely familiar with the literature and may ask you about the papers you have cited.

I love it when seminar talks give you a good sense of the line of reasoning in the literature that led to the question at hand, and when their research appears to be in conversation with other work. Though I've seen plenty that don't really do this much (and just give the standard broad intro that doesn't do more than say what all the things they are going to talk about are). Papers tend to have less variation.

Though remember that in writing, if you can say what you want to say using fewer words, you should. If the citations or the exploration of history is off-topic or otherwise doesn't serve your purpose, reconsider them.

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Make no mistake about it, African literature is taking over the world. It has sprouted from Africa, but it has grown in all the corners of the globe. It is a literature of the native lands, but it is also a literature of sensibility, of exile, of migration, of travel, of home-leaving, home-staying, homecoming. It is a literature that can no longer be contained in a continent, or by a school, or a name, or a homogeneity. It is a literature of all schools, of new schools without a name, a re-invention of the past, a transmutation of the storytelling earth.

There was a time when African literature was treated with a ghettoization. Now it is a universe. It always has been the fact that the excellence of its practitioners transforms the perception of a place, a school, a tradition, a nomenclature. It is a literature of great stories, of great laughter, of great suffering, of great technical abilities. The literature has altered the geography of world literature. And it is only just beginning. The genie has been released from the bottle and cannot be put back there again. And it is one hell of a genie, bursting with centuries of stories and dreams to create and share.

I have always been a little envious of the beautiful times of the sixties when the writers of Africa all knew one another, fraternized with one another, and came together in argument and solidarity at the universities, the festivals, the great conferences. They came together and celebrated together and unleashed their manifestos or their mockery of manifestos together. Now the literature has grown, the practitioners are scattered across the globe, and so many of them have not met the others, and there is this distance between us. I dream of a big coming together, of another FESTAC, another vast festival where all the writers, young and older, in all their persuasions and genders, in their styles and affinities, can come together and celebrate this great literature that we have all managed to create together. I am hoping that this would be the beginnings of that realization.

Not falling apart we are flying together, not palmwine drinkards we are literature drunkards. We are interpreters, petals of stories, celebrating the joys of writinghood, our roads not famished but multiplying, in dizzying profusion.

An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.[1]

Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population are counterexamples.

In some countries (e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal education.[2] Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills; admission essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants, and in the humanities and social sciences essays are often used as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.

The concept of an "essay" has been extended to other media beyond writing. A film essay is a movie that often incorporates documentary filmmaking styles and focuses more on the evolution of a theme or idea. A photographic essay covers a topic with a linked series of photographs that may have accompanying text or captions.

Subsequently, essay has been defined in a variety of ways. One definition is a "prose composition with a focused subject of discussion" or a "long, systematic discourse".[3]It is difficult to define the genre into which essays fall. Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, gives guidance on the subject.[4] He notes that "the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything", and adds that "by tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece". Furthermore, Huxley argues that "essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference".These three poles (or worlds in which the essay may exist) are:

Montaigne's "attempts" grew out of his commonplacing.[5] Inspired in particular by the works of Plutarch, a translation of whose Œuvres Morales (Moral works) into French had just been published by Jacques Amyot, Montaigne began to compose his essays in 1572; the first edition, entitled Essais, was published in two volumes in 1580.[6] For the rest of his life, he continued revising previously published essays and composing new ones. A third volume was published posthumously; together, their over 100 examples are widely regarded as the predecessor of the modern essay.

While Montaigne's philosophy was admired and copied in France, none of his most immediate disciples tried to write essays. But Montaigne, who liked to fancy that his family (the Eyquem line) was of English extraction, had spoken of the English people as his "cousins", and he was early read in England, notably by Francis Bacon.[7]

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