An Unmethodical Method: The Contemporary Critical Essay

This thesis charts a genealogy for the critical essay, a topical subset of the literary essay that includes analysis of an artwork amongst its objects of inquiry. After examining the genre’s literary, theoretical and philosophical antecedents, the critical essay is deployed as an analytical framework through which to read the work of contemporary North American practitioners Wayne Koestenbaum, Chris Kraus and Hilton Als. The critical essay is then applied as a creative methodology in an accompanying creative project, Terror Australis, a suite of seven interlinked critical essays examining representations of fear in Australian cinema.