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35 - The Essay in the Age of Catastrophe

from Part IV - Fractured Selves, Fragmented Worlds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2024

By
Rachel Baldacchino
Edited by
Denise Gigante  and
Jason Childs
Denise Gigante
Affiliation:
Stanford University, California
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Summary

Essays of the ‘age of catastrophe’ encompassing the two World Wars have been judged aesthetic failures because, in their argumentative force and dogmatism, they break with a fundamental commitment of the essayistic: to provide an open, even democratic relational space between reader and writer. This has hindered our ability to recognise them as important objects of historic memory. Assuming that the rhetorical power of the essay may just as often be used to defend truth and justice as to agitate for and justify violent conflict, this chapter will examine the essayistic mode of political essays by Rudyard Kipling and Vernon Lee. It will argue that political essays often display the same longing for connection and attachment that has long been deemed the cornerstone of the literary essay.

Keywords

age of catastropheVernon LeeRudyard KiplingHerbert Kitchenerpolitical essaypacifismFirst World WarpropagandaLydia FakundinyDavid Russell
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the British Essay , pp. 526 - 539
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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