Definition and Examples of Formal Essays

In composition studies, a formal essay is a  short, relatively impersonal composition in prose. Also known as an impersonal essay or a Baconian essay (after the writings of Englands first major essayist, Francis Bacon). In contrast to the familiar or personal essay, the formal essay is typically used for the discussion of ideas. Its rhetorical purpose is generally to inform or persuade. The technique of the  formal essay, says William Harmon, is now practically identical with that of all factual or theoretical prose in which literary effect is secondary (A Handbook to Literature, 2011). Examples and Observations Formal essays were introduced in England by [Francis] Bacon, who adopted Montaignes term. Here the style is objective, compressed, aphoristic, wholly serious. . . . In modern times, the formal essay has become more diversified in subject matter, style, and length until it is better known by such names as article, dissertation, or thesis, and factual presentation rather than style or literary effect has become the basic aim.(L. H. Hornstein, G. D. Percy, and C. S. Brown, The Readers Companion to World Literature, 2nd ed. Signet, 2002)A Blurred Distinction Between Formal Essays and Informal EssaysFrancis Bacon and his followers had  a more impersonal, magisterial, law-giving, and didactic manner than the skeptical Montaigne. But they should not be viewed as opposites; the distinction between formal and informal essay can be overdone, and most great essayists have crossed the line frequently. The difference is one of degree. [William] Hazlitt was essentially a personal essayist, thoug h he wrote theater and art criticism; Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin were essentially formal essayists, though they may have tried a personal essay once in a while. Personality creeps into the most impersonal of writers: it is difficult to read Bacon on friendship or having children, for instance, without suspecting he is talking about autobiographical matters. Dr. Johnson was probably more a moral  essayist than a personal one, though his work has such an individual, idiosyncratic stamp that I have persuaded myself to place him in the personal camp. George Orwell seems split fifty-fifty, an essay hermaphrodite who always kept one eye on the subjective and one on the political. . . .The Victorian era saw a turn toward the formal essay, the so-called essay of ideas written by [Thomas] Carlyle, Ruskin, [Matthew] Arnold, Macaulay, Pater. Between Lamb and Beerbohm there was scarcely an English personal essay, with the exception of those by Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas De Quincey. . . .(Phillip Lopate, Introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay. Anchor, 1994)Voice in the Impersonal Essay[E]ven when I plays no part in the language of an essay, a firm sense of personality can warm the voice of the impersonal essay narrator. When we read Dr. [Samuel] Johnson and Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling, for instance, we feel that we know them as fully developed characters in their own essays, regardless of their not referring personally to themselves.(Phillip Lopate, Writing Personal Essays: On the Necessity of Turning Oneself Into a Character. Writing Creative Nonfiction, ed. by Carolyn Forchà © and Philip Gerard. Writers Digest Books, 2001)Crafting the Impersonal IUnlike the exploratory self of Montaigne, Francis Bacons impersonal I appears already to have arrived. Even in the comparatively expansive third edition of the Essays, Bacon provides few explicit hints as to either the character of the textual voice or the role of the expected reader. . . . [T]he absen ce of a felt self on the page is a deliberate rhetorical effect: the effort to efface voice in the impersonal essay is a way of evoking a distant but authoritative persona. . . . In the formal essay, invisibility must be forged.(Richard Nordquist, Voices of the Modern Essay. University  of Georgia, 1991)