essay
Essays may explain, analyze, describe, narrate, or argue a point. This topic is part of Writing within Language. This page currently draws on 22 supporting questions, with answers and bonus facts available below.
essay trivia questions
An essay is a piece of writing that develops a central idea or what?
Answer: Argument
Bonus fact: Essays may explain, analyze, describe, narrate, or argue a point.
What is the sentence that states the main claim or central idea of many essays called?
Answer: Thesis statement
Bonus fact: A thesis statement tells the reader the essay's central argument or focus.
Which French writer popularized the literary form and coined the title Essais, meaning 'attempts'?
Answer: Michel de Montaigne
Bonus fact: Montaigne's Essais, first published in 1580, helped establish the modern personal essay.
Which Emerson essay famously urges intellectual independence?
Answer: Self-Reliance
Bonus fact: Self-Reliance became one of his best-known essays.
Emerson's 1836 essay Nature helped launch what movement?
Answer: American Transcendentalism
Bonus fact: Nature argued for a spiritual relationship between humanity and the natural world.
Which essay by Thoreau influenced later advocates of nonviolent resistance?
Answer: Civil Disobedience
Bonus fact: Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. drew inspiration from its ideas.
The title essay reflects partly on Baldwin's relationship with whom?
Answer: His father
Bonus fact: It links personal grief with the Harlem riot of 1943.
Who wrote the Essays?
Answer: Michel de Montaigne
Bonus fact: Montaigne's collection began appearing in 1580.
What does the word 'essay' mean in Montaigne's usage?
Answer: An attempt or trial
Bonus fact: The French verb essayer means 'to try.'
What subjects do Montaigne's Essays cover?
Answer: Personal experience, philosophy, and human behavior
Bonus fact: Their range is famously broad.
Which Paz essay examines Mexican identity?
Answer: The Labyrinth of Solitude
Bonus fact: The book is one of his most influential prose works.
Who wrote We Should All Be Feminists?
Answer: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Bonus fact: The essay grew from a TEDx talk.