What is a formal essay and familiar essay?

Ans.

FORMAL ESSAY

A serious, dignified logically organized essay written to inform is called formal essay. Though many eminent critics have tried to define the word essay, yet no body has succeeded in giving a really satisfactory definition of this brief but difficult literary form so for. The point of the essay is not the subject, for any subject will suffice, but the charm of the writer’s personality. Alexander Smith in his paper On the Writing of essay says, “The essay as a literary form resembles the lyric, in so far as it is moulded by some central mode, whimsical, serious or satirical. Give the mood, and the essay from the first sentence to the last, grows around it as the cocoon around the silk worm.”

In the formal essay the writer treats his subject objectively. He de scribes in his essays his point of view, and his attitude of mind regarding a particular topic. Bacon, the father of the English essay, adopted the formal form of the essay. In his essays we see Bacon as the practical philosopher and wise man of the world and not his private and personal life. His speaks from experience and his interest is not in himself but the results of his observations.

These results take the form of clear cut theories and convictions, not the interesting uncertainties; and are organized into logically compact treatise which move irresistibly from beginning to conclusion. The charm of Bacon’s essays lies in the wise and weighty observations of the writer and the lucid, simple and at times poetic style in which they are written. He deviates from the tradition of Montaigne, the true tradition of the essay, which most of his successors followed.

FAMILIAR ESSAY

It is the more intimate, subjective and personal essays. It is light in manner and tone, often humorous, occasionally whimsical and always deft and polished in its approach to personal experiences, problems and prejudices. Among the well-known essayists of this type, are to be mentioned Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, Robert Louis Stevenson and E.B. white.

The eldest and the chief of the group was Charles lamb who has endeared himself to us by his Essays of Elia (1832). lamb belongs to the class of intimate and self revealing essayists.

His essays fully represent his personality-its wisdom and sympathy, its tenderness and charm, in a word its richness. Their scope includes personal history (Christ’s Hospital, Five and Thirty years Ago) literary criticism (On the Artificial Comedy of the Last Century), character sketches (Mrs. Battle’s Opinions of Whist) and fantastic fiction (A Dissertation of Roasted pig), the tone of the essays ranges from the flippant ridicule of a Bachelor’s complaint of the Behaviour of married people to the sentimental reverie of Dream Children. Lamb’s essays are the best example of familiar essay.