Topics: The essay as a literary form

Representation and Meaning

LCS113
Nelia G. Balgoa
February 13, 2024
Origin

The history of the essay as a

literary form has its origins in the
cultural revolution of the
Renaissance and is closely linked
to the emergence of new kinds
of writing about the self and new
ways of thinking about the world
that were part of it.
 • Essays (1587)
Francis • digressions and directness, informal reflections
on old age and friendship as well as a political

Bacon analysis of the conflict between science and

religion.

• Essais (1580)
• Literary autobiography
Montaigne
'Almost all essays,' 'begin with a capital I — "I think", "I feel" — and
when you have said that, it is clear that you are not writing history or
philosophy or biography or anything but an essay, which may be
brilliant or profound, which may deal with the immortality of the soul,
or the rheumatism in your left shoulder, but is primarily an expression
of personal opinion.’

Virginia Woolf, 1905

Narrative essays

Is essentially, telling a story. This When it comes to writing your

may be fiction, or a narrative of narrative essay, try to engage the
a real-life experience. reader through vocabulary and
imagery. Remember, there is always
space for some description.
Representation
• The use of language to say something meaningful about, or to present
the world meaningfully to other people.

Language
The concept of MEANING
representation
Culture
• To represent something is to describe or depict it, to call it up in the
mind by description or portrayal of imagination; to place a likeness of
it before us in our mind or in the senses;
• To represent means to symbolize, stand for, to be a specimen of, or to
substitute for; as in the sentence “In Christianity, the cross represents
the suffering and crucifixion.
Representation through Ianguage is therefore central to the processes
by which meaning is produced.
Language to represent

• But how does Ianguage construct meanings?

• How does it sustain the dialogue between participants which enables
them to build up a culture of shared understandings and so interpret
the world in roughly the same ways?
 Mental
Real/Material world
world/concept Language

Two systems of representations

• Just as people who belong to the same culture must share a broadly
similar conceptual map, so they must also share the same way of
interpreting the signs of a language, for only in this way can meanings
be effectively exchanged between people.