Guest editor's introduction : the time of the essay, today [CounterText, 9(3)]

Abstract

One of the suggestions of ‘the time of the essay’ – the title of this special issue of CounterText – is the idea that there might be a moment in literary history that is favourable to the essay. Such a moment would be ‘the time of the essay’ in the sense that within it the essay finds the right conditions to flourish. Understood in such a way, ‘the time of the essay’ evokes connotations of a ‘golden age’ or a ‘great age’, analogous to how, for example, the period stretching from the middle of the sixteenth century up until the Civil War of 1642 was deemed to have been a golden age for the theatre in England, or the 1940s and 1950s are often called the ‘Golden Age of Broadway’. In a golden age for a literary or artistic form, social, cultural, political, technological, historical, and other factors – together with exceptional contributors, writers, or artists – combine to create the ideal context for that form to be widely adopted, refined, and received.