Literature Glossary

Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.

Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.

Essay

Definition:

An essay is a short piece of writing about one subject.

We know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Short?! This 8- to 10-page research paper my English teacher just assigned isn't short!" We feel your pain, Shmooper, but it is short when you compare it to a novel.

Essays come in all sorts of flavors—narrative, argumentative, descriptive, process analysis, definition, interpretive—and can cover just about any topic you can imagine.

Feel like questioning race and class distinctions? Find yourself some James Baldwin. If nature's your thing, try Ralph Waldo Emerson's transcendentalist essays on for size. We recommend Nora Ephron if you're into witty, perceptive essays about those everyday things that we tend to overlook. David Foster Wallace is your guy if you're all about irony, lobsters, cruise ships, and footnotes. And if you like reading about the decay of American values, check out Joan Didion.

And maybe try taking a yoga class or something.

P.S. More interested in writing an essay than reading one? Head over to our Essay Lab.

Tags: General, Genre