Readings in Nonfiction
The History of the Essay
We’re going to start from scratch in this course, considering the first few scraps of writing that emerged in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BCE. From there, we’ll move slowly through time, reading and discussing the gradual development of the essay in Sumer, Akkadia and Babylon, trying to figure out what distinguishes those earliest texts that we might call "essay" from those contemporary texts that we would classify as "poetry" or "fiction." So we’ll start off with the fundamental questions What is an essay? What is "essaying"? And how do we distinguish what goes on in this genre from everything else in literature?
From there: Egypt, China, Japan, Greece, Rome, Belgium, Russia, Mexico, Italy, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Germany, Ireland, England, France, America, etc.