| Course Description |
“Find a subject you care about and which in your heart you feel others should care about. It
is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and
seductive element in your style.” Kurt Vonnegut
What makes the essay of personal experience an essay rather than a journal entry? How can
one's specific experience transcend the limits of narrative and transmit a deeper meaning to any
reader? How can a writer share the wisdom gained from personal experience without
lecturing her reader? In The Art of the Essay, we explore the answers to these questions by
reading personal essays in a variety of different forms. We begin with Michel de Montaigne, the
16th-century philosopher who popularized the personal essay as we know it and famously
asked, “What do I know?" We then follow the development of the form as a locus of rigorous
self-examination, doubt, persuasion, and provocation. Through close reading of a range of
essays from writers including Annie Dillard, Salman Rushdie, Langston Hughes, Jamaica Kincaid, and June
Jordan, we analyze how voice, form, and evidence work together to create a world of meaning
around an author's experience, one that invites readers into conversations that are at once
deeply personal and universal in their consequences and implications.
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