This afternoon I finalized my annual Student Progress Report, well mostly finalized since I'm waiting for Elijah to post a couple of abstracts to the BROG blog. But it's ok since he will need them for his report as well. Collaboration is great in that way...one helping the other while helping themselves.

I also spent a couple of hours today working on the first Ultimate Blogger challenge. We are to blog about food - text, pictures, what have you. The deadline is midnight Tuesday, which I take to mean 11:59 pm rather then 12:00 am. My entry is finished though I will undoubtedly tweak it between now and submission.

As I wrote, I thought about a blogging issue that has followed me from BROG's first research project that lead to Bridging the Gap: A Genre Analysis of Weblogs. We had much discussion on Blood's (2002) genre category of "notebook" which she defines as:

Sometimes personal, sometimes focused on the outside world, notebooks are distinguished from blogs by their longer pieces of focused content. Personal entries are sometimes in the form of a story. Some notebooks are designed as a space for public contemplation: Entries may contain links to primary material, but the weblogger's ruminations are front and center. Shorter than an essay, longer then the blog-style blurt, these sites are noted for writing that seems more edited than that of the typical blog. Both blogs and notebooks tend to focus on the weblogger's inner world or their reactions to the world around them; the links themselves play strictly a supporting role.

For our project we rejected "notebooks" as a genre, and Blood has largely backed away from the description in her recent work. But the general concept of the "notebook" type blog entry has stayed with me.

While working on my paper The Adjustment Spiral: Feedback and Calibration in Weblog Performance I was introduced more thoroughly to the work of Walter Benjamin. In particular his essay Unpacking My Library again brought forward the concept of the "notebook" blog post.

So today I sat writing for the Ultimate Blogger contest I was again thinking about genres and sub-genres of blogs and blog posts. My challenge entry on the topic of "food" runs 1,200 words and could best be classified as a Personal Essay. Though it would fall under the "diary/journal entry" genre I can easily see it fitting into a sub-genre of personal essay within that classification.

I think the personal essay form is one that while not standard in blog entries can not be called uncommon. Lopate (1994, p. xxiv), quoting from Holman and Harmon's, defines the personal essay as:

The personal essay...is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experience, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme, freshness of form, freedom from stiffness and affectation, incomplete or tentative treatment of topic."

The personal essay is a subset of the informal essay, or, as A Handbook of Literature defines it, "a kind of informal essay, with an intimate style, some autobiographical content or interest, and an urbane conversational manner."

< snip >

The personal essay has an open form and a drive toward candor and self-disclosure. Unlike the formal essay, it depends less on airtight reasoning than on style and personality.

What makes this different from many diary/journal blog posts?  I would say off the top of my head - length, polish, and tone. A personal essay entry would be longer and more stylized and formal then a standard down-and-dirty blog post. They would be self contained, though linking of course would be accepted, but as Blood highlights in her notebook definition linking would be used only to support the text not to replace it.

I can tell I will be rolling this issue around as I write over the next few weeks. Let me know your thoughts as well.

Reference List:

Benjamin, Walter (1968). Unpacking my library: A talk about book collecting. In Hannah Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations (pp. 59-67). New York: Schocken.

Blood, Rebecca (2002). The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge MA: Perseus Publishing.

Holman, C. Hugh, and William Harmon (1992). A Handbook to Literature. Sixth Edition. New York: Macmillan.

Lopate, Phillip (1994). Introduction. In Phillip Lopate (Ed.), The Art of Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present (pp. xxiii-liv). New York: Anchor Books.

Posted by prolurkr at May 2, 2005 10:04 PM

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