“Conditional Truth” – Essay as a Literary Genre Cover Image

“Kondicionalna istina“ – esej kao književni žanr
“Conditional Truth” – Essay as a Literary Genre

Author(s): Branislav Oblučar
Subject(s): Aesthetics, Theory of Literature
Published by: Hrvatsko filološko društvo
Keywords: essay; literature; genre; style; philosophy; rhetoric; poetry;

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses essay as a literary genre. Scholars writing about essay (Adorno, Epstein, Solar, Gaudes and Louette, etc.) try to emphasise those points which indicate a specific structure of essay-type discourse and its relationship with, on the one hand, literary genres and, on the other, philosophy. Further discussion focuses on juxtaposing essay and rhetoric, i.e. the way in which essay negates and revives rhetorical procedures, as well as on a complicated relationship between essay and poetry. Accordingly, essay seems to be a genre whose function is cognitive and whose reasoning is defined by means of expression, i.e. style which is the basis of the literariness of the genre.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 75-90
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Croatian