One of the factors that have made us evolve as a species has been our ability to reason and to be able to transmit ideas and information. If there is a narrative genre that perfectly describes this fact, it is the literary essay, a genre in which any author has seen himself with the freedom, throughout history, to express his ideas and points of view.
While there are many types of essays that focus on complex and highly methodical topics, literary essays leave a door open for expressing opinions on subjective topics. In this article we are going to talk about essays and we will delve into how to write a literary essay.
What is an essay?
The essay is a literary genre that has its origins in the Renaissance and that arose from the natural need of people to be able to present their opinions on different topics. In most cases, it is a type of argumentative text in which an idea is manifested and expressed from the point of view of the author and his writing.
The essay is not suitable for coherence seekers but it is nutritious for the curious and the alchemists who combine stories, images and theories.
Within, for example, the scientific or academic field, it is a literary subgenre that has a lot of weight since it is capable of creating structured and contrasting discourses. In this way, you can collaborate and contribute new points of view on issues of universal knowledge.
Types of essays
As we said, there are several areas that can be covered by an essay and different branches of knowledge. Despite the fact that in all of them the objective of this narrative text is the same, the type of theme, structure and approach varies.
That is why different types of essays have been created to be able to classify the texts depending on their theme and the way they are created. Next, we are going to review the main types of essays and their spaces.
Literary essay
The literary essay is one of the types of essay that has spread the most and it is precisely the one that we are going to delve into in this article. It is a type of text in which the author deals subjectively with a free theme. Compared to the rest, the use of literary resources predominates.
The author seeks not only to express his opinion and point of view, but to do so in an ornate and careful way, demonstrating his skill with the pen. This type of essay, most of the time, is oriented to humanistic or social topics such as philosophy, art, sociology or political science.
The great referents of humanist knowledge such as the RAE or the National Library have large libraries of literary essays from all periods.
Scientific essay
In this type of essay, the author tries to express his point of view but focused on issues related to science and always under an objective and pragmatic prism. These types of texts are usually used to be able to express new contributions or ideas within the scientific area through specific data. Large organizations such as the Ministry of Science and Innovation receive and generate a large part of this type of text.
Academic essay
Academic essays are a type of argumentative text that is used, almost exclusively, in the school or university environment. It is the narrative resource that is used to be able to develop ideas or texts within a professorial or academic perspective. Follow a very marked methodology and use an agreed and formal vocabulary. Large universities such as the UAM or the UB have a large repertoire of this type of essay.
Philosophical, sociological and historical essays
We have wanted to include these three types of essays in the same epigraph since all three follow the same formal characteristics but differ in subject matter. In this way, these are texts that seek to expose and argue, from the author’s point of view, topics of interest within the world of philosophy, sociology or history.
Expository essay
It is a type of essay that departs in a certain way from the rule of other essays and, instead of wanting to present arguments and convince the reader of his point of view, what he seeks is to clearly expose a topic or definition in a clear and precise way.. For example, textbooks in schools would be an example of expository essays.
Descriptive essay
It is a type of free-themed essay in which the author focuses exclusively on narrating and describing concepts, meanings or situations. You can do it from a subjective point of view but, unlike other types of essays that provide hypotheses, in descriptive essays, the author focuses solely on describing a specific situation or topic from his point of view.
How to write a literary essay?
After being clear about what an essay is and reviewing the main types that exist, we are going to focus on the topic that concerns us; literary essays. These types of texts can be approached by anyone. It is not necessary to be a scholar or academic of the subject to be able to present your ideas.
That is why, if you have a point of view that you want to share, surely more than once it will have crossed your mind to write everything and self-publish your text. In that case, we are going to give you a series of steps so that you can start writing your literary essay.
Think of a subject with potential
The first step to be able to write a literary essay is to be able to determine the topic that is going to be discussed. It should be borne in mind that this type of essay is characterized by its brevity. It is not about writing a thesis on a topic, but about writing a short text where an opinion on a specific topic is elegantly and structured.
That is why it is best that it be a topic that interests you and on which you have been reflecting. Most literary essays have to do with topics related to art, humanities or social sciences.
It can be, for example, an essay on the importance of some artistic movement, the criticism of a political party, the reflection on some philosophical current or your opinion on the decriminalization of abortion. You just have to, in this first step, think and determine what you want to write about.
Find out and start documenting yourself
Once you have chosen the topic, and even if it is a subjective type of text, the second step is to find out and document yourself well. The ideal is to be able to read, investigate and make an analysis on the topic to be discussed. Knowing the point of view of other authors and checking what has been said over time on this topic is essential.
This, in addition, can help you to have other points of view or to change the panorama you had, making your text more interesting and informed. Make sure that you have reviewed all the sources well before proceeding so that your text has relevance and literary interest.
Organize the ideas and think about the structure
Literature and literary texts have the advantage that authors have considerable freedom when creating. Despite the fact that there are defined structures and styles, each writer can take license and play with the form and substance. However, in the case of literary essays this is not so. This type of argumentative text follows a very defined structure that should not be overlooked if you want your text to be successful.
Before starting to write, and with the topic and research defined, what you should do is create a structure and organize the ideas you want to present well. In general, literary essays usually follow the introduction, development and conclusion formula, although you can also find the logical method, exposing the facts and their consequences, and the explanatory method, analyzing the main points of the topic and illustrating with examples.
