Bibliographies

Articles About Non-fictional Prose

From: "Martin, Dan" <dan.martin@Rockhurst.edu>
Date: Wed, 6 Jun 2001

The list below might be overkill, but, having focused on the essay in my dissertation, I can't help myself.

The most useful work for me has been Butrym's anthology listed below, which offers many attempts to define the essay.  It has a varied selection of critical pieces, including one of the best descriptions of the genre, Scott Sanders' "The First Person Singular."  The collection also includes Barbara Mellix's "From Outside, In," which focuses on the tension in her writing life between "black English and standard English."  Both Mellix and Sanders are in Fourth Genre as well.  In the fall of 2002 College English will be featuring a special issue on creative nonfiction.  Here are some useful books, articles, and essays:

Butrym, Alexander J.   Essays on the Essay: Redefining the Genre.  Athens: U
of Georgia P, 1989

Anderson, Chris.  "Hearsay Evidence and Second-Class Citizenship."  College
English 50.3 (March 1988): 300-08.

Atkins, G. Douglas.  Estranging the Familiar: Toward a Revitalized Critical Writing.  Athens: U of Georgia P, 1992.

Early, Gerald.  Introductions to Vol. I and Vol. II.  Speech and Power: The
African-American Essay and Its Cultural Content from Polemics to Pulpit.
Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1992.

Gass, William H.  "Emerson and the Essay." In Habitations of the Word.  New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.  9-49.

Good, Graham.  The Observing Self : Rediscovering the Essay.  London: Routledge, 1988.

Harris, Wendell V.  "Reflections on the Peculiar Status of the Personal Essay."  College English 58.8 (December 1996): 934-53.

Heilker, Paul.  The Essay: Theory and Pedagogy for an Active Form.  Urbana:
National Council of Teachers of English, 1996.

Lopate, Phillip, ed.  The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the
Classical Era to the Present.  New York: Doubleday, 1994.  xxiii-liv. [The
introduction is an accessible reflection on patterns within the genre].

Sanders, Scott Russell. "The Singular First Person."  Sewanee Review 96
(Oct.-Dec. 1988): 658-72.  [In Butrym].

Sontag, Susan.  Introduction.  The Best American Essays 1992.  New York:
Ticknor and Fields, 1992.  xiii-xix. [Every year the introduction to the
Best American Essays offers a different commentary on the genre].

White, E. B.  Essays of E. B. White.  New York: Harper and Row, 1977.
[White's foreword is an interesting take on the genre]

Dan Martin
Rockhurst University