Essayisms Reading Group: Ists and Isms

Monday 25 January 2021, 5.00PM

Please join us for the first Spring term meeting of the Essaysisms reading group where we will be discussing the group's unwitting namesake, Brian Dillon's Essayism (2017).

What does it mean to use the tools of the essay to try to define the essay? Brian Dillon takes the formal definition of the essay as a trial or an effort and seeks to define what that kind of effort might mean, both in literature and in life. How can you be true to a form that is made up of contradictions? What would it mean to live essayistically? Fragmentary, lyrical, digressive, personal, distracted, evasive, polemical, illuminating, infuriating, Essayisms is an important aesthetic statement on the genre. In this week's session, we'll be reading Essayisms in its entirety.

Brian Dillon's Essaysism (Fitzcarraldo Editions) is available as an ebook via the library. We have also included PDFs of specific sections for discussion in this google folder, for those who cannot read the full text.

This research seminar is part of the CModS research strand 'The Contemporary Essay'

All are welcome! Please contact Dr Lola Boorman (lola.boorman@york.ac.uk) for access to readings or any questions about getting involved.

Please register your attendance via the link provided)

Location: Online via Zoom