The Essay: Theory and Pedagogy for an Active Form. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 395 314 CS 215 284 AUTHOR Heilker, Paul TITLE The Essay: Theory and Pedagogy for an Active Form. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, REPORT NO ISBN-0-8141-1584-5 PUB DATE 96 NOTE 222p. AVAILABLE FROMNational Council of Teachers of English, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096 (Stock No. 15845-3050: $14.95 members, $19.95 nonmembers). PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Use Teaching Guides (For Teacher) (052) Books (010) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC09 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Authors; Class Activities; *Essays; Higher Education; *Instructional Innovation; Literary Genres; *Student Development; *Student Writing Models; *Theory Practice Relationship; Writing Assignments; *Writing Instruction IDENTIFIERS Essay Topics; Form Recognition; Historical Background; *Writing Development; Writing Thinking Relationship ABSTRACT Calling for a radical reexamination of the traditional foundation of composition instruction--the thesis/support form, this book argues that the essay, with its informality, conversational tone, meditative mood, and integration of fort. and content, is better suited to developmental, epistemological, ideological, and feminist rhetorical pespectives. The book first traces the origins of the essay in the 16th century. It then examines 20th-century theories of the form to illustrate what constitutes the fundamental qualities of the essay--epistemological skepticism, anti-scholasticism, and the use of an "anti-Ciceronian chrono-logic" organization ("we can only have one thought in our heads at a tite, one thought leads to another, and time flows in only one direction"). This leads to writing that is well developed and well ordered, consistent, and methodical. The book shapes a "rehabilitative theory" of the essay by applying the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin to advance a conception of the essay as a centrifugal, novelistic, dialogic, and carnivalesque form. The book then examines the practice of some contemporary essayists--Aldous Huxley, Joan Didion, Charles Simic, Alice Walker, Scott Russell Sanders, Gretel Ehrlich, and Joseph Epstein. Extensive, detailed accounts of assignments and classroom activities on the essay form that have bien used effectively with students are offered. Several student essays are presented in their entirety and analyzed in the book. An afterword and appendixes on sources and works cited conclude the book. (NKA) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** `rtr ri .zt 0"*F"P' ...C" PERMISSION TO REPRODUCEAND DISSEMINATE THISMATERIAL H S BEEN GRANTEDBY tr. 4 TO THE EDUCATIONALRESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER1ERIC) ,e-t,-K *-"' ki --at - % re N. N.. it.ii,......: . ,, . ..,''' *At ...,..r,..' 3,-- vk.1 ..k. 4,4d.,,,:f..,s-,k: /..,..., .i....,,,"*..,.;.:*,. - ..... 1,.,.:....... .t., -;'%rfI,,.. -.--- -77^.'7.-4:-.3'2.:_..... .,. .....--...., *4.,-..,e (', ..., - .:::.,,;,, I. :--1, ,e, . _,44,--4.1.'(*'. A v, - -:"..-.,v:..".7... : \ .',. R-'. ':),' . a.; 1.:54".'.' .1.-.4k, --(4,-,-,i.-'1.- '4-.1i,.,-)!:,:. ,..t.e - ' Viti, * ni . .' .. 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Ii official OERI osition or nr The Essay NCTE Editorial Board: Colette Daiute, Hazel Davis, Bobbi Fisher, Keith Gilyard, Brenda Greene, Gail Hawisher, Ronald Jobe, Richard Luckert, Karen Smith, Chair, ex officio, Mario Welshons, ex officio College Section Committee James L. Hill, Albany State College, Georgia, Chair Frank Madden, Westchester Community College, Valhalla, New York, Assistant Chair Pat Belanoff, SUNYStony Brook Theresa Enos, University of Arizona, Tucson Jeanette Harris, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg Dawn Rodrigues, Kennesaw State College, Marietta, Georgia Cynthia Selfe, Michigan Technological University, Houghton Tom Waldrep, University of South Carolina, Columbia Collett Dilworth, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina Louise Smith, University of Massachusetts, Boston, ex officio Miriam Chaplin, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey, Executive Committee Liaison Miles Myers, NCTE Staff Liaison The Essay Theory andPedagogy for an Active Form PAUL HEILKER Virginia Tech National Council of Teachers of English 1111 VV. Kenyon Road, Urbana, Illinois61801-1096 rTS Grateful acknowledgment is made to the publisherfor permission to reprint the following: "Mellow" fromCollected Poemsby Langston Hughes. Copyright 1994 by the estate of Langston Hughes.Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Editor: Peter Feely Cover Design: Doug Burnett Interior Design: Doug Burnett NCTE Stock Number 15845-3050 © 1996 by the National Council of Teachers of English.All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. It is the policy of NCTE in its journals and otherpublications to provide a forum for the open discussion of ideas concerningthe content and the teaching of English and the language arts. Publicityaccorded to any partic- ular point of view does not imply endorsementby the Executive Committee, the Board of Directors, or the membershipat large, except in announcements of policy, where such endorsement is clearly specified. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Heilker, Paul, 1962 The essay : theory and pedago},T foran active form / Paul Heilker. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8141-1584-5 (pbk.) 1. English languageRhetor:cStudy and teaching.2. Essay AuthorshipStudy and Teaching.3. Academic writingStudy and teaching.I. Title. PE1404.H396 1996 808.4'07dc20 96-2669 CIP 6 Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi Preface xix This IsNotan Essay or AnApology (of Sorts) Chapter One 1 The Need for an Alternative Form inComposition Instruction or TivEmperor Has No Clothes Chapter Two 13 Montaigne and the Early English Essay or Back to the Future, Part One vi Contents Chapter Three 37 Twentieth-Century Theories of the Essay or Back to the Future, Part Two Chapter Four 65 The Practice of Some Contemporary Essayists or Living in the Real World Chapter Five 87 The Essay in the Composition Classroom or Adventures in Writing Chapter Six 161 The Essay as an Alternative Form in Composition Instruction or The King Is Dead, Long Live the King and Queen Afterword 167 Kineticism Incarnate: Motion/Movement and the Form of the Essay Or Moving Violation: These Boots Were Made for Walking Appendix A 185 Sources Used in Survey of Recent Composition Textbooks in Chapter 1 Appendix B 189 Works Cited in Essay Assignment in Chapter 5 Works Cited 193 Index 203 Author 208 , For anyone like myself, whohavingrecognized that the struggle and search for knowledge, wisdom,and truth will never end cannot understand what is so wrongwith being confused and uncertain, what is so bad,Nut changing one's mind. (1 Acknowledgments I would like to thank every person I havespoken with about this project since its inception in 1991 andthank my students for their willingness ro take a risk for the sake of learningand growing. I would especially like to thank Gary Tate for hisinsights, guidance, encouragement, and criticism, Winifred II.Horner, Jim W. Corder, and Neil Daniel for their enthusiastic endorsementand cogent cri- tiques of this work, Claudia Knott for her generoushelp in conclud- ing my research, Aileen Murphy for herunwavering support, and Eli Heilker for being such an inspiration.Without each of these people, my thinking and writingmy lipwouldhave remained impoverished and this book would not exist. 10 ix Introduction This book presents itself insuch a level-headed fashion thatreaders might miss the affront implicitin what it asks. Its claim, afterall, sounds so sensible: the essay, asit was originally practiced, is a per- fect complement to thethesis/support form mandated in most composition classrooms, and assuch needs to be taught atleast as much as its counterpart.Consequently, we need a moretightly the focused, "rehabilitative" theoryof the essay. As a corrective to teacherly habit of referring tovirtually all normal school writing as word ambiguous to the essaysapractice that has rendered the it point of being practicallymeaninglessPaul Heilker argues that is better to envision the essay as adistinctive textual form identifi- able by three major ingredients:skepticism, anti-scholasticism, and an alternativemode of arrangement or organization(chrono-logk). These characteristics are notthe result of some idiosyncraticreread- ing stemming from theauthor's private aesthetics.Rather, by exam- ining the origins of the essay,its earliest practice by Montaigneand theorists of the first English essayists, thework of twentieth-century the form, and the essays ofcontemporary writers, Heilkerhas found these three major elements tobe present