Bloomsbury Publishing has just released the hardback version of The Essay at the Limits: Poetics, Politics and Form, edited by Dr Mario Aquilina, Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Malta.
The Essay at the Limits brings together leading scholars to explore the theory, the poetics and the future of the form. It links the formal innovations and new voices that have emerged in the 21st-century essay to the history and theory of the essay. In so doing, it surveys the essay from its origins to its relation to contemporary cultural forms, from the novel to poetry, film to music, and from political articles to intimate lyrical expressions.
The sixteen contributors to the volume are based in European and American universities, and they include Dr Rachel Baldacchino, Prof. Ivan Callus, Prof. James Corby and Dr Maria Frendo, who are based at the University of Malta.
Robert Atwan, Series Editor of The Best American Essays, has described the book as:
An outstanding collection of cutting-edge criticism and scholarship on a historically undervalued genre. The contributors offer fresh and diverse perspectives on traditional approaches to the essay as well as provocative new ways to reimagine the genre's literary and cultural significance as we move deeper into a digital future. The essay needs and deserves more rigorous studies like this one.
A sample of the book can be accessed here. Copies of The Essay at the Limits will be made available at the library of the University of Malta in due course. The book may be purchased from online bookstores that deliver to Malta.