Noun

(en-noun)

The body of all written works.

The collected creative writing of a nation, people, group or culture.

All the papers, treatises etc. published in academic journals on a particular subject.

*

The obvious question to ask at this point is: ‘Why posit the existence of a set of Thematic Relations (THEME, AGENT, INSTRUMENT, etc.) distinct from constituent structure relations?? The answer given in the relevant literature is that a variety of linguistic phenomena can be accounted for in a more principled way in terms of Thematic Functions than in terms of constituent structure relations.

Written fiction of a high standard.

However, even “literary” science fiction rarely qualifies as literature , because it treats characters as sets of traits rather than as fully realized human beings with unique life stories. —Adam Cadre, 2008

Noun

(en noun)

A written composition of moderate length exploring a particular issue or subject.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-01

, author=Katie L. Burke , title=Ecological Dependency , volume=101, issue=1, page=64 , magazine= citation , passage=In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature , David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.”}}

(obsolete) A test, experiment; an assay.

An attempt.

* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom , Oxford 2003, p. 455:

This was Lee's first essay in the kind of offensive-defensive strategy that was to become his hallmark.