2 - Surprised into Form: The Beginnings of the English Essay

Summary

This chapter examines the origins and style of the early English essay, in order to consider the peculiarities of the form. The first section discusses the vexed origins of the English essay, which arrived on the literary scene both as an innovation, and as a continuation of older forms of moral discourse. It argues that essays were characterised by a paradoxical relationship to temporality, affecting both how the form began, and its style, in representing thought and thinking. Examining the style of essays by Francis Bacon, William Cornwallis, Nicholas Breton, Owen Felltham, and John Hall, the chapter uncovers a tension between flow and stasis, evident in punctuation and the structure of sentences. Rather than taking this to signal two distinct styles of the early English essay, associated respectively with Montaigne and Bacon, the chapter argues that it is the tension that is characteristic, oscillating between the representation of deliberation and decision.