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Perhaps no one was in a better position to know than Johnson, although he may have discounted, in a show of modesty, the difficulty of a form he mastered as few have, and which helped sustain him through the longer-term pursuit of compiling the first modern Dictionary of the English Language (in which he defines essay as “a loose sally of the mind”). But no matter how they find their way out of the author's head and on to the printed page, the best essays, as Virginia Woolf said, “haunt the mind and remain entire in the memory.” This course will introduce you to some of the most haunting and memorable essays ever written, including several by Montaigne, the inventor of the form, who even provided the model for Johnson’s disclaimer by alleging: “I have only made up a bunch of other men’s flowers, providing of my own only the string that ties them together.” Despite his protests, Montaigne (whose dense revisions and corrections of his own texts are a matter of archival record), knowingly created one of the most extraordinary self-portraits of all time by, as Woolf appreciated, “open[ing] the doors wide upon all experience…rejecting nothing, tolerating everything, and watching the play of the soul with irony and detachment.” You’ll sample the work of such other masters as Swift, Addison, Lamb, Hazlitt, Emerson, Thoreau, Woolf, Orwell, E. B. White, and Roland Barthes, as well as some totally awesome writers who are a little off the beaten path like John Betjeman, J. B. Jackson, Reyner Banham, and Nora Ephron. Virginia Woolf and E. B. White will be considered in particular depth. And while you're adding to your knowledge of the canon up to now, you'll also have the opportunity to enlarge and expand a few of ideas of your own into portfolio-ready essays with “the warmth of fancy” and the Houston summer. Please remember, this course entails a serious commitment to out-of-class reading and writing. This 5-week program of learning by doing is open to students from the Houston metropolitan area who will be entering the 10th, 11th, 12th grades or college. To apply, complete the student section of the PDF form and give it to a teacher who knows you well or a counselor to fill out the recommendation section. Your teacher/counselor should mail the completed form along with an official transcript directly to:
To ensure full consideration, applications must
be received by 31 May; early applications are encouraged. All applicants will be notified by
2 June; early applicants will be notified sooner.
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