Journalism has been developing all the time since its appearance. Today it can be characterized by the following features:
- appearance of styles;
- appearance of species;
- selection of genres;
- formation of different types.
Essay was born during the development of journalism and underwent a certain transformation during its existence. Despite its rather long existence, this genre still does not have its clear forms, clear boundaries and clear types that distinguish it from other genres of journalistic directions.
This kind of state of things has caused the emergence of disparate opinions among scientists who express their opinions and their attitude to this genre. Sometimes such views do not coincide with each other, and in some cases they even conflict.
At its core, essay is a historical-biographical, literary-critical and philosophical genre, which also combines the presence of the individual position of its author. That is the authors of essays offer their readers some of their philosophical reflections on a particular problem, question, situation. Essay cannot be called a pure representative of fiction, but the latter has its distinct features-style, etc. In this case, the genre has the ability to approach either philosophy or journalism. It can also depart from them. It all depends on the author.
Today, we can safely say that essay refers to a kind of genre, which is the most mysterious and most common in the literature. In fact, anyone who is ready for the "free flow of thoughts" can write an essay, and this is the main feature of this trend in literature.
