Student Scholarship

Document Type

Research Paper

Abstract

This honors project, completed by Norma M. Nixon between 1959 and 1960, serves as a comprehensive study of the personal essay as a literary form. The work is divided into two distinct components: a historical and analytical review of prominent essayists from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, and a collection of original personal essays written by the author to demonstrate the insights gained through her research. The analytical portion involves the study of various masters of the craft, including Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, John Earle, Joseph Addison, and Samuel Johnson, as well as more modern figures like Mark Twain and James Thurber. Nixon uses a creative narrative framing device in her opening essay to personify these authors, staging a fictional meeting in which they debate the relative merits of humor, philosophy, and conciseness in literature. 

The second half of the project consists of eight original essays that apply various stylistic techniques, ranging from the witty and humorous to the reflective. These pieces cover a wide array of personal experiences, including the humorous trials of learning to ride a horse named Mabeline, the trepidation of a first visit to a bloodmobile, and the technical and emotional frustrations of a college anatomy lab involving the dissection of a dogfish. Other narratives detail childhood memories of sledding accidents, the lifecycle and funerals of family pets, and the physical comedy of a college tumbling class. The final section provides a candid look at the author's experiences during student teaching, illustrating the practical challenges of classroom management and lesson planning. Ultimately, the project functions as both a tribute to the evolution of the personal essay and a practical exercise in developing an individual literary voice.

Research Highlights

  • The Problem: The author examines the historical development and stylistic characteristics of the personal essay to gain insight into how the genre evolved from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. 

  • The Method: Research involved a comparative study of major essayists including Montaigne, Bacon, Earle, Johnson, and Thurber, supplemented by the author’s original personal essays modeled on these historical styles. 

  • Qualitative Finding: Personal essays transitioned from the seventeenth-century "character" sketches of John Earle to the structured, concise philosophy of Francis Bacon; the "essais" of Montaigne focused on preserving individual personality through humor and classical references; modern twentieth-century works by James Thurber and Mark Twain utilize surface-level humor to mask underlying themes of pessimism or dejection. 

  • Finding: The personal essay serves as a medium for artistic expression that balances light-hearted humor with deeper philosophical insights, as evidenced by the works of Samuel Johnson and the contributors to The Spectator.

Publication Date

5-1960

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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