What does essay mean? Essay example

Literature and journalism are rich in various genres. One of these genres is the essay. The first acquaintance with the essay occurs at school during Russian language lessons, and those who in the future study at the Faculty of Philology or Journalism study the essay in more detail.

Definition of essay

In order to understand the essence of the issue and understand what an essay is, you need to know its definition. Essay is literary work Not good large sizes, which describes true events or incidents. Any essay is always based on a description of facts or events that happened earlier. Distinctive feature Such a story is descriptive in nature through the eyes of an eyewitness. An essay is an inexhaustible source of truthful historical information about certain people, events, and facts. There is no time frame in the essay. The event that is presented to the reader can be either past or present. The main thing is that the actions or incidents described in the essay are important to society. Such a story excludes the use of the author’s own assumptions and subjective assessment.

Place of the essay in literature

What place does the essay occupy in the cultural development of a person, why is this literary genre important, and what is an essay in literature? The main purpose of an essay in literature is to convey to the reader information about an event “uncut,” for example, about war or reforms, about any events in any country. The focus is not on the person, but on what is happening. A short narrative, called an essay, makes it possible to accurately and reliably learn about dates and specific people. In modern literary world You can observe events in the country and the world thanks to newspaper essays. There is not a single area of ​​human activity where this method of reporting factual events is not used. We can come to the conclusion: the essay is one of the most important literary genres, where you can find out a lot of necessary, and most importantly, truthful information.

There are several types of literary essay, each of which reveals to the reader a specific problem. The main types of essays: travel, portrait and problem.

Travel essay

The author of such an essay talks about his or someone else’s journey, describing the entire path. Everything the author saw, heard or tried is true information. Such an essay is characterized by a description of the culture, customs and characteristics of the area visited by the author.

Portrait sketch

The basis of such an essay is a detailed, true story about this or that historically significant or interesting person for readers. For example, it could be the president political figure, famous artist or poet. Many examples can be found in biographical articles and memoirs.

Problem essay

A story that accurately and without exaggeration describes important historical event or a problem of society - war, revolution, reforms, etc. To write this type of work, one takes as a basis an event that was important to others, which took place in the world or country and influenced the development and course of history.

There are more than fifty different genres in literature, and the essay is one of the most interesting of them. This essay incorporates a little from fiction, a little from journalism. Schoolchildren and students unknowingly write ordinary descriptive articles, but this is wrong. An essay is something more, it contains the author’s thoughts, there is truthful information, facts, and thoughts on solving the problem. To write such an article, in some cases it is necessary to conduct journalistic investigation. This is why you need an example of an essay, so that it is clear how to format an essay and exactly what thoughts to put on paper. Similar works are found in many famous writers.

What is an essay

First encounter with this literary genre happens in Russian language lessons, but all its types and subtypes are studied in more detail by journalists and philologists. To write an essay correctly, you need to understand its essence. An essay is a small essay describing true incidents, events, or a specific person. Time frames are not respected here; you can write about what happened thousands of years ago and what just happened.

Before writing an essay, it is necessary to collect all the facts, since they are the basis of the essay. The incidents and actions narrated by the eyewitness must be important to society and raise serious sociological issues. The article is written in a descriptive style; subjective assessment and the author’s own conjectures are excluded.

Main Components of an Essay

An essay of this genre should contain three main components: journalistic, sociological and figurative aspects. The author must raise socially important issues. This could be an essay on the topic of teenage crime, alcoholism and drug addiction of a particular people, pollution environment, AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis and other diseases dangerous to society. The writer must take facts as a basis, rely on statistics. For example, this could be data on the number of sick people in a particular region, country or throughout the world, on the amount of hazardous substances released into the atmosphere, etc. At the same time, the work cannot be littered with only numbers, otherwise it will turn out dry, too official and will not affect the feelings of the readers.

Journalism in the essay is also very important, since the author acts as a journalist and conducts a personal investigation. An example of an essay can be found in many entertainment magazines and newspapers. To obtain reliable data, sometimes you have to devote a lot of time to collecting information. To do this, you need to visit the library, look for facts on the official websites of enterprises or government agencies, communicate with specific people, visit the places described, because you cannot describe how beautiful Lake Baikal is by seeing it only in a picture. In other words, the essayist must be versatile, an inquisitive person, a great expert on life.

To interest the reader, you need to write an essay in a beautiful literary style. Genre is an important component of a work. The essay must be written in artistic style, here it would be logical to have a colorful description of the problem, a story about the life of a specific person. The introduction of a bright and memorable character into the story will allow the reader to immerse himself in a certain environment and understand the essence of the problem. The text has a specific structure: identification of the problem, its analysis, search for solutions. An essay of this type is a combination of statistics with everyday stories.

The history of the essay

A striking example of the work can be seen in the work of some writers XVIII century. The fact is that such informative, vivid and fascinating essays appear in times of crisis in social relations, changes in the usual way of life. Great Britain came to this genre in early XVIII century, because it was during that period that the moral decline of the elite of society was observed. The magazines mainly published socially critical sketches on everyday scenes or the characters of representatives of certain segments of the population.

In Russia, a similar phenomenon was observed in the second half of the same century. In satirical magazines, the intelligentsia ridiculed officials and landowners of the old system in essay forms. In the first half of the 19th century, the crisis reached unprecedented heights, so essays became the main genre of writers who wanted to convey to society the idea of ​​the decline of morality, the oppression of the poor, the stupidity and degradation of those in power and the rich. Saltykov-Shchedrin, Belinsky, Nekrasov wrote in this style, and Gorky, Korolenko and other democratic writers continued in the same spirit.

An example essay can also be found in Soviet literature. This genre is fueled by changes in the life of society, changes in the economic, social, everyday and legal spheres of life. Soviet writers developed compositional and substantive forms, improved the main functions of the essay: exploring a problem, revealing the complexity of life. V. Tendryakov, E. Radov, F. Abramov, E. Dorosh and others resorted to this genre.

Portrait work

The genre of portrait sketch requires good observation and erudition from the sketch artist. In the absence of these qualities, the author will not produce a bright and live description appearance of a person, but some kind of identikit. Good essays are usually produced by lovers of classical literature, because such people already know how to roughly compose a text. The classics have already left full-fledged examples as souvenirs for posterity. portrait sketches. You also need to accustom yourself to observation, to carefully look at the behavior of your relatives, friends, acquaintances, ordinary passers-by, and neighbors. You should concentrate on the manner of conversation, style of speech, gait, gestures, facial expressions, body features, facial features.

In creative universities, mainly in directing departments, students are offered to play a game - describe stranger, try to guess his profession, where he is going, who his companion will be, etc. An essay in the genre of a portrait essay is written in the same format. Be sure to carry a pen and notepad with you to record everything you see interesting points, details, this will help you train and learn to separate the important from the unimportant. Experienced essayists at first glance identify the specific qualities inherent in the person being described.

Only a description of the hero’s appearance, gestures, and gait should not contain a portrait sketch. An example can be seen in classical literature. External appearance can very often tell a lot, introduce you to the inner world of a person, his habits, preferences. For example, by the appearance and condition of clothing, you can find out whether the hero is neat, interested in fashion, likes to be the center of attention, or prefers to blend in with the crowd. When studying a person, one should rely not only on the visual impression, but also involve the senses of touch, hearing, and smell. What the hero’s hands feel like, what his voice is like, maybe he smells like something special.

A portrait sketch may contain an example from the life of the character being described. For example, something unusual happened in the hero’s life; he had to save people from a burning house, solve global issues affecting the economy of the region, undergo a serious operation, etc. It is necessary to observe how a person’s character is manifested through this act. It must be unusual verbal portrait, consisting of beautiful words, the incident shows what a hero is like in life, whether you can rely on him.

Travel essay

Before writing a work, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with the works of other, more experienced authors. An example of an essay can be found in the works of such great writers as Pushkin, Novikov, Radishchev, etc. You cannot write an essay of this type without experiencing the emotions described, without seeing the sights with your own eyes. Here you cannot rely only on fantasy, because an essay is a truthful work based on reliable information. When traveling to some places, you definitely need to make notes in a notebook about the impressive details of the landscapes, interesting incidents, what you liked and what did not go as planned. At the same time, you cannot describe a specific person; the essay should be more ambitious.

It is common for a person to forget about some moments in his life, so during a trip it is useful not only to take notes, but also to keep an audio diary and take photographs. Before writing an essay, you need to collect all the photographs and notes, refresh your memories, draw up an approximate one, and only then start writing it.

Problematic work

A literary essay contains an analytical beginning and artistic description. IN problematic work the author may touch upon any economic, political, social, environmental situation, which he is very knowledgeable about. The main goal of the essayist is to get to the bottom of the truth, to understand why such a problem arose, what it can lead to, and what ways there are to solve it. Essay requires in-depth analysis, a superficial description will not do here. Before writing an essay, you should not only study the problem in detail, but also read the works of other authors, get acquainted with their views on this issue, and study the writing style.

Write this kind of Only the person who is interested in solving and analyzing the existing problem will be able to write high-quality texts. The topic should be close to the author himself, only then will he describe the situation in a truthful and vivid language. IN travel essay the individuality of the essayist is very clearly visible, the text is written only in the first person. The author must clearly outline the essence of the problem, familiarize readers with his vision of the situation, and the work can also be supplemented with the opinions of several characters, it is very good if they are opposite.

The essay is based only on reliable information, but it should not be overloaded with graphs, figures and statistics, so as not to turn it into a dry, uninteresting article. The essay is written in an artistic style; if any data is given, it must be accompanied by explanations and comments. This type of text is similar to a story and a story; it allows the use of artistic expressions, spatial reflections, and comparisons with other events.

Essay about a man

Gorky also said that a person should be at the center of a work. The writer also mentioned that the essay is between a story and a study. This genre cannot be called light, since it consists of rational facts and bright, emotional description events. In the essay, journalism, documentary and creativity should complement each other, then it will turn out to be an interesting, truthful and lively essay about a person. You can look at examples of such works from the classics; it is from them that you need to learn and try to reach the level of their works.

The hero must be at the center of the work; he must be described from both sides. First you should find out the character's social relationship with society, and then study it inner world, find out how he behaves at home, treats close people, acquaintances. You need to collect as much information as possible about a person before writing an essay. Example of stage-by-stage compilation of a work: conducting interviews, selection key points, listing positive and negative character traits, mentioning extraordinary situations in the character’s life.

In an essay it is usually necessary to write short biography person, but it should not be similar to personal data. It is important to focus on the character of the hero, and you can’t just say that he is hardworking, persistent, smart, etc., you need to provide evidence, give examples of difficult moments from his life, tell how he behaved, what guided him. When describing a certain action, you should analyze psychological characteristics human, typical and personality traits character. You can also talk about the hero’s thoughts in a given situation.

There are no absolutely isolated people; every person interacts with society to some extent; he has and is influenced by economic, political, and moral processes. Therefore, in an essay you need to be able to connect together the hero’s individuality with social phenomena, show the character’s attitude towards them. Professional essayists often manage to reconstruct an important historical event through some fact from the biography of a particular person.

If central figure is famous with numerous merits, it is worth emphasizing them. The essay-essay should also contain a topic about creativity and spiritual quest. Nice piece not only tells the reader in detail about someone else’s life, achievements and downfalls, but also makes you think about understanding your mistakes, learn to dream, set goals and achieve them.

Essay-investigation

Very often, journalists conduct research in order to tell the reader about unknown or little-known information. This may be some unusual area human activity or the study of certain phenomena. It is also allowed here historical essay, the author may collect important data about a specific region or country, research buildings built several centuries ago, or reveal an organization that keeps secrets important information for many years.

To begin with, the journalist must begin collecting facts and, if necessary, go to the scene of the investigation. Then you need to decide on the task and goals of the study, based on the information received, you can proceed to putting forward various versions and hypotheses. In America, an investigative feature refers to material collected and analyzed by a journalist on a serious topic that some people would prefer to keep secret. Not everyone can write such an article, since even at the stage of collecting information, certain qualifications are required; the author must understand the topic of research. At the same time, the essayist must not only competently operate with data, but also describe situations in a beautiful, lively form and create an image of the central character.

Judicial essay

Unfortunately, not only good events and essays are written by kind, sympathetic people. There are different stories, some with a bad ending. Works on judicial topics are mainly written by journalists with the goal of giving a moral assessment of the crime, making readers think about where this world is heading, and finding ways to prevent the recurrence of such situations. The author of the essay must analyze in detail the elements of the crime committed by a group of people or one person. The journalist does not give a legal assessment of the situation, he must come from afar, talk about what influenced the criminal’s action, what factors pushed him to take a terrible step, what forced him to break the law.

For example, a young man is accused of theft. The essayist must understand the motive of the crime. This is a guy from childhood, his parents taught him to steal and cheat in order to get food for himself. So he is used to such a life, the man does not want to get a job, start a family, he likes to idle and live at the expense of others. Of course, not only the young man is to blame for this, but also his parents, society, which did not stop him at the right moment and did not direct him on the right path.

In his essay, a journalist should describe in vivid colors the childhood of a street child, how he begged on the streets, searched with stray dogs there is at least some food in landfills. It is also worth mentioning parents suffering from alcoholism, who do not care about the child, a society that turns a blind eye to such children. The main task of the author is to show the conditions and circumstances that led a person to commit a crime and to analyze the motive.

The facts may include eyewitness testimony, details and elements of the crime. The journalist must not only acquaint the reader with a negative assessment of the criminal’s actions, but also make him think about his own behavior. Perhaps there are people very close by who need help; if you don’t lend a helping hand to them today, then tomorrow they will become potential thieves and murderers.

Place of the essay in literature

Each genre has a certain influence on the minds of humanity. What is an essay in literature, what place does it occupy in the cultural development of people, how important is it for society? The main goal of this genre is to tell the reader the truth about current events, innovations, and the life of a particular person. Thanks to the living understandable language information is easier to digest. A colorful description takes the reader to those places or paints an image of the person the author is talking about. Although the essay reads like it does, it contains reliable dates and facts.

Most people learn about events happening in the world from newspaper articles written in feature form. There are no areas of human activity in which this one of the most important and useful literary genres would not be used. Thanks to the essay, people will learn a lot of reliable information from different corners peace. In the literature there is great amount varieties of this genre, the most common of which are portrait, travel and problem.

The meaning of the word ESSAY in the Dictionary of Literary Terms

FEATURE ARTICLE

Epic genre: prose work, based on facts, documents, personal impressions of the author, that is, unlike the story itself, devoid of elements of fiction. An image can include not only a description (portrait, landscape, interior), but also a narration about events and characters. The O. genre is also characterized by free construction and openness. author's position. Depending on the degree of factuality, there are differences between journalistic-documentary (it is usually considered as a genre of journalism. (See journalism) and artistic reporting. In journalistic-documentary reporting, events, facts and phenomena are depicted in the form in which they exist in reality itself, and documentary is its specific genre feature. The subjects of depiction in artistic artistic expression usually include everyday life, the way of life, and the customs of a particular environment (moral descriptive artistic expression). typical representatives or bright, outstanding, colorful personalities. Fiction includes the so-called “physiological” O. (with a predominance of description), biographical essays, travel, and satirical O.

Dictionary of literary terms. 2012

See also interpretations, synonyms, meanings of the word and what an ESSAY is in Russian in dictionaries, encyclopedias and reference books:

• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Literary Encyclopedia.
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  
• FEATURE ARTICLE in big Soviet encyclopedia, TSB:
  one of the varieties small form epic literature- a story that differs from its other form, the short story, by the absence of a single, sharp...
• FEATURE ARTICLE V Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  , -a, m. 1. A small literary work, short description life events (usually socially significant). Documentary, journalistic, everyday about. 2. General...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Big Russian Encyclopedic Dictionary:
  ESSAY, in thin form. Literary is one of the varieties of the story, it is more descriptive, it affects the main thing. social problems. Journalism, incl. doc., essay...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Complete Accented Paradigm according to Zaliznyak:
  about" essay, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, about" essays, ...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Popular Explanatory Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  -a, m. 1) A small literary work, a brief description of facts, events taken by the author directly from life itself. Psychological essay. Synonyms: new "ella ...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Thesaurus of Russian Business Vocabulary:
  Syn: see...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Russian Language Thesaurus:
  Syn: see...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in Abramov's Dictionary of Synonyms:
  sketch, outline, sketch, sketch, contour. See book,...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Russian Synonyms dictionary:
  Syn: see...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the New Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
  m. 1) Outline, contour. 2) A small literary work that gives a brief expressive description of something. 3) Description, research of some kind. question that gives a general...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in Lopatin’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  `essay,...
• FEATURE ARTICLE full spelling dictionary Russian language:
  feature article, …
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Spelling Dictionary:
  `essay,...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in Ozhegov’s Dictionary of the Russian Language:
  a general presentation of some issue in Russian history. essay - a short literary work, a brief description of life events (usually socially significant) Documentary, journalistic, ...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the Modern Explanatory Dictionary, TSB:
  1) in fiction one of the types of stories, characterized by greater descriptiveness, deals primarily with social problems.2) Journalistic, including documentary, ...
• FEATURE ARTICLE V Explanatory dictionary Russian language Ushakov:
  essay, m. (book). 1. Contour, outline. Don't come near: she is encircled by a magical outline. Baratynsky. How tender are the outlines of the white woman’s face and neck. ...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in Ephraim's Explanatory Dictionary:
  essay m. 1) Outline, contour. 2) A small literary work that gives a brief expressive description something 3) Description, research of something. question that gives...
• FEATURE ARTICLE in the New Dictionary of the Russian Language by Efremova:
  m. 1. Outline, contour. 2. A short literary work that gives a brief, expressive description of something. 3. Description, research of any issue, giving a general...

What is an essay and why is it interesting? Firstly, this is one of the genres of literature - small piece, which describes an event or person. Secondly, this genre is a symbiosis of artistic and journalistic styles. Thirdly, it is advisable to write it if you have an example of an essay at hand. For better understanding genre, you can re-read “Notes of a Hunter” by Turgenev or “Sakhalin Island” by Chekhov. The famous travel essays of Radishchev or Pushkin will also become wonderful examples.

Features of the genre

An essay is a type of story that is written in a semi-fiction, semi-documentary genre and describes real people and real events. In a word, your imagination won’t run wild here. It is difficult to write such a work, even if there is an example essay, because you need to take into account the main structural components, genre features and a penchant for truth. It has some traditional distinctive characteristics:

• It is written in a short narrative form.
• Describes only real people and events.
• Focuses on social issues.
• It is 80-90 percent a description from life.
• Sticks to undeniable facts.
• Allows the writer to express his opinion and conduct a dialogue with the reader.

Thus, an essay is a text that talks about real event or a person, while paying attention to a certain social problem(if possible, the reader is also involved in the discussion). All this is presented as a literary text, rich graceful images. Even if you have a sample essay with you, it is difficult to write a decent piece the first time.

Varieties

There are several types of essays in literature. They can be:

• Portrait.
• Problematic.
• Travel ones.
• Sociological.
• Journalistic.
• Artistic.

What are their features?

Essays originated during the Renaissance. Then morally descriptive writings first appeared on the pages of English satirical magazines. Several decades later, such essays became widespread in European literature. Big success they had in France. Honore de Balzac and Jules Janin were the first representatives of this genre in French literature.

In Russia, the first essayist to lay the foundations was N. Novikov, who was published in the satirical magazines Truten and Zhivopiets. The heyday of this type of creativity came in the 1840s. Already in the next decade, essays became the leading genre in literature. The most outstanding authors in Russia are M. Saltykov-Shchedrin and V. Sleptsova. Therefore, there are many examples of essays in the literature. When writing own work you can use them.

How to write a text correctly

Before moving on to looking at sample essays, it’s worth giving some practical advice to aspiring authors. Where to begin? How to finish? These questions will torment performers even if they review all the examples available in the literature. How to write an essay?

The first thing you need to do is choose a topic. Need to find fascinating story, which the author himself will like. Research it, find out additional facts, and decide on the type of essay. For example, you can develop the situation and compose interesting text, which will arouse sympathy in the reader. It can also be a biographical or educational essay, historical, travel or exposé. The main thing is that the text can captivate the reader.

Next, you need to decide who this essay will be intended for, that is, the target audience. It depends on her what words the text will be written in. If all these stages have been completed, you can prepare to write.

Second important point- decide on the format of the text. Essays do not have a strictly regulated format, which greatly facilitates the work of authors. For example, you can start by describing dramatic moment, use the “story within a story” format, or write from two points of view at once that will find common ground. The next thing is size. Sample essay texts range from 250 to 5000 words. You can do less, you can do more. The main thing is to fully disclose the topic.

Having decided on organizational issues, you need to think about how to attract the reader’s attention, interest him and intrigue him. Some essayists believe that for this it is necessary not to tell, but to show - more emotions, more images, more intrigue. When creating a text, you should not get carried away with quoting. As a rule, readers do not appreciate this, and you need to create exclusively in their language. That's what it is step by step example how to write an essay. Now you can move from theory to practice.

Portrait sketch

As mentioned above, this type of creativity is the most artistic. That is, it can provide the reader with some interesting details from the life of the person being described. In an example of a portrait sketch, you can talk about your contemporary, friend or historical figure. Regardless of who we are talking about, it is worth touching on some problem. It may concern modern society or a group of specific people. An example essay about a person might look like this.

“I’m all in a handful of brains, but I devour so many books that the world cannot contain them. I can't satisfy my ravenous appetite. I’m dying of hunger all the time,” Tommaso Campanella. The son of a shoemaker, a failed lawyer, a monk and a criminal who spent 27 years in the prisons of the Inquisition.

Until the age of 34, he wandered around monastic cells and spent 27 years in prison. While in captivity, he studied intensively literary creativity. The prisoners were not given parchment and ink, but Campanella managed to find them. His works were confiscated, but he stubbornly restored them from memory and translated them into Latin himself.

City of Sun

During his imprisonment, Campanella managed to write several fundamental works on philosophy, theology, astrology, astronomy, medicine, physics, mathematics, and politics. In total, 100 treatises with a total volume of 30 thousand pages came from his pen. The main one among them is considered to be the “City of the Sun”.

Our hero 27 for long years wrote about a world in which a blessed utopia reigns. There people work only 4 hours a day, and devote the rest of the time to their hobbies. There are no disagreements, wars or repressions. It was this treatise that was largely considered heresy, and it was because of it that Campanella spent half his life in the clutches of the Inquisition. He was repeatedly asked to abandon his thoughts about utopia, but he stubbornly insisted on his own. Until the very end, until his last breath, he believed in his convictions.

For some time he was an honored guest at the royal court, but the whole world turned against him. Campanella never backed down from anything. Torture, hunger, cold, dampness, and illness did not break him. He had something to tell the world about.”

This is one example of a portrait sketch. There is a description of the person, his fate, character and the problem is mentioned. Now you can move on to the next example of text, a problematic essay.

Problem essay

This is a rather difficult type of creativity. You can take it on only until the smallest details delving into the problem presented to the readers. Otherwise the author will look funny. We provide one example of the text of a problematic essay that touches on the problem of family. Previously, everyone wanted to get one. Modern people became completely different. They value their own freedom more than a stamp in their passport. Let's see what an example of a problem essay looks like.

"Is it necessary to modern man family? If you look at the statistics of divorce proceedings, you can doubt this. Modern girls They are in no hurry to get married. They can provide for themselves while remaining free from obligations. Why do they need marriage? To take care of the man living under the same roof with them? Cook for him, wash his socks and shirts, iron his trousers and handkerchiefs? The husband is unlikely to give flowers and expensive jewelry, endure whims and fulfill any desire in order to spend the night with his wife. It’s a completely different matter when a woman is free and a man plays the role of a lover.

About happiness and meaning

Why are families created? For some, this is the meaning of life. A family is created when love appears in the heart, when you want to take care of your loved one and be responsible for him.

People strive for spiritual joy and intimacy. A happy family- this is a place where you restore strength, relieve stress and have fun. Leo Tolstoy once wrote: “Happy is he who is at home!” This is true. Isn’t it happiness to run home, knowing what’s waiting there? Family is the basis of a happy couple's life.

Should I have a wedding and get a stamp in my passport, or should I live for my own pleasure, caring only about myself? Everyone must decide for themselves what is more important to them.”

Road

As for the travel essay, an example text might look like this.

“A journey, even a very short one, is like a sip fresh air. Every time you return from another city, you seem to change, become a slightly different person. I don’t have a clear schedule that would indicate when and where I should go. Just from time to time I have a desire to go somewhere. Then I go to the station and take a ticket for the next train to the fifth stop. After getting off the train, I can head to regular buses and go into the distant wilderness or wander the streets big city, which bears the loud name of a metropolis.

This happened this time too. I drove towards remote villages and accidentally came across an abandoned village. Strange, but many residents of the surrounding villages did not even suspect its existence. This village has not been on the map for a long time. Nobody remembers its name, even in the archives very little information about it has been preserved.

Light

There are practically no houses left here. Behind for a long time nature destroyed what man created. If you count, there are three more or less intact houses left in the entire village. Entering one of them, I expected to see empty rooms, broken furniture and mountains of garbage. This usually happens in abandoned buildings.

These examples of essay essays can be used as a basis for your own work. But still, it’s better not to try to imitate anyone’s texts. The main thing is to truly feel the problem under consideration and put your feelings into the text. This is how you can touch the reader.

In the works of genre researchers there is no single definition of an essay. Etymologically, the origin of the word “essay” is related to the semantics of verbs "outline – outline."

You can use the following definition: “ Feature article- a short narrative work whose main purpose is figurative illustration or figurative information" .

To the begining

§1. Genre specifics

The main difference between the essay as an artistic and journalistic genre from the informational and analytical genres is the following: it absorbs certain features of two spheres - journalism and artistic speech. This means that both journalistic and artistic elements should be indicated as genre-forming features of an essay, keeping in mind that at all stages of text creation (according to the rhetorical model), the dual nature of the essay will necessarily be taken into account. The stylistic features of the essay include:

1. Author's "I". The journalistic element is created by the author’s direct thoughts, the author’s direct intervention in the narrative, and often the author acts as actor, one way or another connected with the depicted hero.

2. Intimization- this is a set of “stylistic techniques by which the author comes into contact with his reader, making him a participant in his message, his feelings, bringing him as close as possible to what he wants to have him as a participant in, straining his interest and in his own elegant way playing with this interest” ( L. Bulakhovsky).

3. Sketchiness(essay). Sketchiness, first of all, is expressed in some “sketchyness”, “freedom” of presentation, some kind of deliberate roughness of form. In the very nature of the essay there is a tendency to highlight the most typical, the most important, the brightest, the desire to outline the main contours of the event, to sketch a portrait of the hero.

Due to the limited size of an essay, especially a newspaper essay, the essayist cannot carefully write out events and characters. The very nature of the essay contains the concept of some fluency, the need to grasp the type of person, to sketch out at least some dotted lines of his character, distinctive features.

4. Documentation. The publicist deals with different people, problems that can be expressed in specific data-calculations, specific terms, scientific formulas, specific names of names, localities, etc. As a rule, in 99 cases out of 100, a story in a newspaper is documentary. When creating an essay, the author relies on facts that allow him to fully disclose the topic.

5. Topicality. The essay appears in the newspaper almost every day. Hence its essential feature – topicality, “immediate” response to an important event, problem.

Closely related to this feature is another one – the relative conciseness of the text. Essay is a genre published on the pages of newspapers and magazines, i.e. genre limited in scope. Therefore, a large amount of accumulated material requires a concise, specific presentation.

6. Hero typification. This is, first of all, a selection of the most essential that exists in life, in reality. An essay is always based on specific life facts, but the fact in its singularity and uniqueness interests the essayist as a manifestation of the general, typical. A real life fact can be replenished in the sketcher’s depiction with additional information and details - this is how elements of artistic generalization appear.

Choosing to depict a person with all manifestations of human activity, a problem, a journey, a conflict, the author takes into account two levels of a newspaper essay: typical and unique, leading the narrative, preserving the individuality of the individual, his activities, his social relationships, he strives to reveal the typical, socially conditioned.

Another property of an essay is closely related to typification - imagery.

7. Imagery. Showing a hero or an event is possible only if the means of artistic depiction are used to create an image. The author of the essay creates a generalized collective image, reflecting typical features in it, but “the fact in the essay is important both in itself and as a starting point.” It, as in any work of art, is a material for creating images. The facts in the essay are interpreted through images.

So, since the essay has as its main subject human individuality with its deeds, connections, joys and anxieties, it is possible to show the hero under the condition of an artistic depiction, creating an image and using figurative means of language.

8. Associativity. When describing a phenomenon, an essayist often compares it with another that happened at a completely different time, in a different place. The connection of events is in the author's associations.

9. A certain amount of fiction. Factual reliability and targetedness of the essay form the basis of the fact, therefore the essayist’s right to fiction is limited to the factual basis of the essay. But still, there is a certain amount of fiction in the essay. The author enhances some forms of fiction, emphasizing some features of the hero in his portrait at the expense of others.

So, it is generally accepted that the essay combines the features of two styles: artistic and journalistic.

Thus, the essay can be defined as an artistic and journalistic genre in which the core organizing the material is the author’s “I”, the thematic center is the person and everything connected with him and his activities. This combination of two styles is reflected in the genre diversity of the essay.

It is customary to distinguish the following types of genre: sketch, portrait sketch, problematic and travel.

Almost all of them have the properties listed above. Their main difference is in the choice and development of the topic.

TRAVEL SKETCH

Travel essay- the most “ancient” variety of the essay genre. The title already reflects its purpose - to outline the path, the route traveled by the author. Its distinctive feature is a certain predetermination, predetermination of the plot. Road observations, meetings, events witnessed by the author, impressions of new countries, localities, cities, a wide panorama - this is the richest material that is revealed to the author of a travel essay.

Famous essayists who worked in the genre of travel essays are considered to be Y. Smuul, V. Peskov, A. Agranovsky, M. Sturua and others. Each of these authors, creating original, individual texts, nevertheless certainly took into account the main features of this genre.

One of the features of a travel essay is the gradual unfolding of the image: the author moves from village to village, from city to city, from country to country, gradually accumulating impressions and facts. These can be impressions from one city, from one route, familiarization with which occurs gradually.

Let's look at the features of a travel essay using the text as an example IN.Peskova"Breadwinner of the North" ( KP. 1999).

V. Peskov

Breadwinner of the NORTH

The tundra in winter is inhospitable and desolate. Frost and wind reign on the endless plain. No manifestation of life! It seems like an uninhabited planet. But what is that there near the horizon? A cloud of steam and something dark underneath it. Binoculars, burning your face with eyepieces, bring the picture closer - you suddenly see a low-growing dense forest moving in the wind. Bah! Yes, those are horns. It's a herd of deer! The moving brown mass is approaching.

Suddenly you see a shepherd with a little dog, preventing the herd from spreading across the white vastness. Up close, a group of animals looks like one organism. But you distinguish the details and suddenly see a deer next to you, completely different from those handsome and proud ones that roar through the forests in the fall. Squat, with a blunt head, which is decorated with horns, prohibitively large, and some skinny. And it turns out: those with horns are females. (In other deer, females do not have antlers.) The males shed their antlers after pre-winter wedding fights, but the females will wear them all winter. For what? The shepherd should have known. But he shrugs.

Having dispersed, the deer began to feed. God, how hard it was for them to get food here! They dug the snow with their hooves, plunged their hairy muzzles into holes and found something there on the slightly bare ground. The frost was below thirty with a biting wind. The helicopter pilot motioned for us to hurry up. Having given the shepherd a supply of cigarettes and some of the backpacks, we rose and saw the herd from above. Trying not to scare him, we made a circle. Still, it was visible: the sound and something moving above scared the deer. They tried to huddle together, apparently feeling that it was safer this way. A black scattering of poppies on the tablecloth remained in my memory and on the film.

Life is hard for everyone in the North. And in the summer, when the midge eats, and in the winter, when everything is covered in snow and when the wind and frost know no mercy. But life, when you look closely, still glimmers here even in winter. Looking around thievishly, the arctic fox ran. The raven, creaking its feather, flew low somewhere on urgent business. The partridges took off and immediately disappeared into the whitish camouflage. There are deer in sight. Although they are short, they look like a challenge to the cold, space, and obvious lack of food. It is in this region that they are adapted to live. If they had stayed south of the tundra for the summer, the deer would not have been able to endure the heat, unless the mountains replaced their saving North. Where he was born, he was good enough!

A fawn is born in cool weather. It’s scary to see: from the mother’s womb he falls straight into the snow. Of course, the mother deer is looking for thawed patches in the snow to give birth, but not everywhere in April there are thawed patches, and the frosts are still severe. Fate seems to immediately tell the baby: this is life, if you survive, you will become an adult deer, if you don’t survive, the arctic foxes will pick you up. Most survive, otherwise the reindeer race would have dried up long ago, despite the fact that only one baby is brought by the important mother.

The deer is immediately adapted to survival. A very warm fur coat saves you from the cold. Very thick, nourishing milk from a caring mother. And almost immediately after birth, the fawn is ready to stand on its feet, walk, and soon run after the herd.

An adult deer is also perfect in confronting the North. The hairs in its fur have air channels. This increases thermal insulation. Deer have almost no sweat glands. And he does not suffer from the cold. Suffer from overheating - it can be hot in the tundra in summer. In such cases, the reindeer herd rushes to the sea for the cold, saving breeze or looks for remnants of snow, on which they lie, cooling off. Only now, having collected everything I know about deer, I unexpectedly found the answer to their strange behavior in Alaska, where oil is produced. There, for some reason, they gather near various iron buildings, barracks and towers.

Why are they attractive to them? We were unable to get an answer to this question from the oil workers. And now I suddenly realized: shadow! Saving shade, which, except near these buildings, cannot be found in the tundra. Fur that is reliable for winter becomes a nuisance in summer.

Winter snow is a small obstacle for deer. The hooves are cloven and spread wide. In addition, the rear “toes” of the hooves are level with the front ones. And hair also grows between the hooves, creating a supporting hard brush. The weight load on snow of a reindeer is four times less than that of a moose. In the snow, a deer feels about the same as people on skis.

Getting food is a hard task. We need to break up the snow. A deer can do this with its hooves. But you also have to put your face into the prickly, hard hole. The deer is also ready for this - the head, lips and space between the nostrils are covered with protective hair that protects from wounds. Half a meter of snow is not a hindrance to a deer. Now, if it’s deeper, then we should no longer be talking about life, but about survival. And a thaw is fatal for the herd, when the inevitable frost will seize the snow with an impenetrable, hard crust. But the deer leave the extreme oceanic tundra for winter.

With the first cold weather, the great deer begin their nomadic journeys, walking along the beaten thousand-year-old paths on which they meet mountains and rivers. In Alaska, an old river captain said: “There was a time when steamships were stopped for a day, or even more, to allow the Yukon deer to cross.” And now there are still places where herds of deer pass by in the thousands. In Alaska, at the exit to the tundra from the mountains, we hoped to photograph this spectacle. We're late! They only saw the ground stamped with their hooves, lost antlers, shreds of wool and ribs of deer killed by wolves.

In summer, the scourge of deer is gadflies and midges. From these bloodsuckers they rush to the saving wind near the ocean. The feeding midge makes them run almost continuously. And, despite the abundance of food, deer short summer they say goodbye skinny. They begin to quickly gain fat when the midge disappears and when mushrooms grow in the tundra - the biggest delicacy and the most nutritious food of the indigenous northerners. They give preference to the same mushrooms as people - boletus, boletus, boletus. Some of the deer become drug addicts, addicted to fly agaric mushrooms. Such an animal is constantly on the move, constantly excited. This is a hindrance to his wild relatives and a nuisance to the shepherds of economic herds.

And the main food for deer is unique - moss lichen, low-nutritive vegetation devoid of salts and protein. And only on it do deer stay, eating reindeer moss in winter and summer, refusing more nutritious food in captivity. Konstantin Simonov in his diaries gives a funny story from a colonel about reindeer transport in the war. “An unpretentious animal, deer! They are so unpretentious that they eat nothing but their own moss. Where can you get it, this moss?” In addition to skinny moss and mushrooms, deer in the tundra also eat bird eggs, as well as mice. The thirst for salt forces them to drink bitterly salty ocean water, and in winter they run to the shepherd if he goes to urinate - they grab the urine-soaked snow.

Having overwintered in the less windy forest-tundra, in the spring the reindeer begin their return journey to their beloved North. Following them are constantly moving wolves - the constant “shepherds” of wild reindeer herds. A wolf will not catch a healthy deer. But in a large herd there will always be someone who is sick or weak. These always have the same ending.

Bears and wolverines also attack deer. But there are few of these animals in the tundra, and their running speed is incomparable to saltines. But these animals are always ready to profit from the herd.

People also hunt wild deer. This hunt cannot be called easy. Deer are sensitive (they can detect danger a kilometer away) and trust their instincts. In Alaska, we observed a lost one-week-old fawn. He recklessly rushed towards us, but his innate instinct told him that it was not right! Scouring helplessly along the valley, he suddenly smelled his mother’s trail and rushed to her along the scent of the trail, as if along a rope.

Local hunters approach wild deer for a shot, hiding behind a group of domestic ones, or, moving against the wind, carrying antlers in front of them. And in last years– motor! Motor sleigh and helicopter. The deer’s heart (mystery: it contains a bone) cannot compete with this strength. For this reason, as well as from disturbance (how many newcomers are in the tundra!) and the destruction of pastures by technology, the number of reindeer in this century has decreased by fifteen (!) times.

Wild deer are strikingly different from domestic ones in size, stature and vigor, although they live in approximately equal conditions. But the wild one is free, and his conquered brother serves people without receiving anything in return. Hence the frailty, short stature and quiet sadness in large almond-shaped eyes. But being different does not prevent deer from feeling a very close kinship. Wild male deer often lead female deer away from the domestic herd, and they very soon lose the desire to return to human control. Reindeer were "semi-domesticated" thousands of years ago.

Exceptionally suited to living on the edge of the possible, he did possible life in the North and people. Without deer, many small nations of the North could not exist. Everything, literally everything, for these people’s life is provided by deer. Deer are food: meat and milk. Deer skins are used for clothing, shoes, blankets, bags, belts and shelter coverings. Reindeer is transport in the endless tundra. Deer blood is a remedy against scurvy. Reindeer veins are split into threads; antlers and bones were used on the farm when the tundra did not yet know iron. The life of the “reindeer peoples” is poor and primitive. But without deer it would be impossible in the North. Only the deer, specialized for life in very harsh conditions, pulled behind it the chain of also specialized human life in extremely harsh conditions.

In every zone of the Earth, man has adapted and placed animals at his service. In the middle zone it is a horse, in deserts - a camel, in the mountains - llamas and mules, in tropical zones - buffaloes and elephants. But none of these animals can compare with the benefits they bring to people. reindeer. Deer in the North are life itself.

Genre characteristics

The travel essay intertwines the features of all the above-mentioned varieties of the genre: in it complex problems of life are posed and ways to solve them are outlined. For example: “the number of wild deer in this century has decreased by fifteen (!) times”; it includes a sketch (a picture from life), in which the author depicts what he saw from beginning to end, including a portrait sketch; it captures both the characters’ characters and the circumstances in which they act. For example: "Straightaway adapted deer to survival. A very warm fur coat saves you from the cold. Very thick, nourishing milk from a caring mother. And almost immediately after birth, the fawn is ready to stand on its feet, walk and soon run after the herd.”

In the essay, with particular strength and brightness appears author's identity. The author's position, reasoning and assessments not only help to understand what is depicted, but also connect disparate pictures into a single narrative, i.e. they are the main condition for the movement of the plot. Thus, in V. Peskov’s essay, his impressions and assessments allow him to imagine the pictures more clearly and move from one moment of the narrative to another: “They tried to huddle together, apparently they felt it was safer. A black scattering of poppies on the tablecloth remained in my memory and on the film.”

A travelogue has great potential. It perfectly combines the means of portrait and event sketches. For example, considering the life of wild deer, V. Peskov, selecting a succession of episodes from the life of animals, constantly gives descriptions of deer: “The midges at feeding time make them run almost continuously. And, despite the abundance of food, deer say goodbye to skinny people with a short summer.”

The author is one of the heroes of the story; he acts as a living witness, and in some cases, a discoverer. For example: “Only now, having collected everything I know about deer, I unexpectedly found a clue to their behavior in Alaska, where oil is produced... And now I suddenly realized: a shadow! Saving shade, which, except near these buildings, cannot be found in the tundra.”

They play a big role in the travel sketch details, details- those elements of the image, without which neither the image of a person, nor the setting, nor the picture of the action arises. Let us dwell in detail on those moments thanks to which the originality of the travel essay genre is created, illustrating them with examples from the same essay by V. Peskov “The Breadwinner of the North.”

This is, first of all, landscape fragments, helping to describe the situation. The landscape is used as a means of determining the timing of the action; as a way of depicting the conditions in which events take place; as an opportunity to convey the hero’s mood.

These are the main functions of microtexts-landscapes, which are an integral part of the travel sketch. Thus, in the essay “Breadwinner of the North”, V. Peskov uses several microtexts-landscapes to describe winter time, including the following: “But life, when you look closely, glimmers here even in winter. Looking around thievishly, the arctic fox ran. The raven, creaking its feather, flew low somewhere on urgent business. The partridges took off and immediately disappeared into the whitish camouflage mud.”

Living conditions are also repeatedly described by the author with the help of small microtexts or interspersed descriptions of details (V. Peskov is a master of detail): “But the deer leave the extreme oceanic tundra for winter. With the first cold weather, the great deer begin their nomadic journeys, following the beaten paths of thousands of years..."

Another function of landscape is to be one of the means of revealing the character of the hero. This possibility can be seen especially clearly in the travel essays of V. Peskov, in whose works the main role is given to animal heroes, and their description accompanies almost every semantic segment of the text, sometimes representing a whole microtext, sometimes being only separate inclusions in a segment with a different semantic purpose. . For example: “But you also have to put it in a prickly, hard hole. face. The deer is ready for this too – The head, lips and space between the nostrils are covered with protective hair that protects from wounds. Half a meter of snow is not a hindrance for deer.”

So, please note that microtext-landscape is one of the elements that makes up the author’s handwriting.

In addition, the presence of such landscape sketches in a travelogue corresponds to the specifics of the genre. With the help of landscapes, the author depicts what he saw, and the details of what he saw form the outline of the essay. In a portrait essay, one description can become the main one; in a travel essay, a scattering of observations throughout the text helps to recreate a single picture.

One of these functions is a detailed description of the route and everything seen on it, that is, the description of a person is not an end in itself, but is subordinated to the general intention of the author.

There are no individual micro-portraits of a person in the analyzed text. But a portrait sketch can include a description of the deer: “But you distinguish the details and suddenly see a deer next to you, completely different from those handsome and proud ones that roar through the forests in the fall. Squat, with a blunt head, which is decorated with horns, excessively large, but somehow skinny, and it turns out: with horns – females."

Isn't it a wonderful portrait? A portrait that conveys both the author’s desire to describe his heroes and his feelings when he sees them. V. Peskov not only admires it himself, but also invites readers to do so.

Features of the introduction of certain microtexts are related with the individuality of the author, the manifestation of his author’s “I”, which is an essential stylistic feature of the genre.

Among all genres of journalism, the essay is the most personal genre. Its most general feature is the activity of the author’s “I”, a high degree of its participation in the development, in the movement of the essay’s plot. The author’s “I” of V. Peskov is felt in almost every line of the text: “I unexpectedly found the answer to their strange behavior in Alaska”; “In Alaska, at the exit to the tundra from the mountains, we hoped to photograph this spectacle” and etc.

The functions of the author's “I” are diverse. Let us recall information genres where the author is primarily a witness. In the essay, along with the function of the author-witness, one can also distinguish the functions of the author-researcher and the author - lyrical hero, which also affects the content (semantic, structural and linguistic) of the text. The functions of the author’s “I” are clearly demonstrated in the table.