essais

Essais is a French noun with two principal senses. In everyday use, essai means a trial, attempt, or test; the plural essais denotes several trials or experimental runs, for example in science, engineering, medicine, or manufacturing, such as essais de résistance or essais cliniques.

Essais also designates the literary genre known in English as essays: short prose pieces that reflect, argue, or explore a subject from a personal or exploratory stance. An essai may be analytical, descriptive, or reflective, and is often provisional rather than a formal, rigorously argued treatise. The plural essais can refer to a body of such pieces by a single author or to multiple essays in a collection. The genre emerged in the early modern period, and the most famous early example is Montaigne’s Essais, a 16th-century collection that helped define the form.

Throughout French literature, essais have been produced by philosophers, critics, and essayists who use the format to question assumptions, record observations, and test ideas in a flexible, often subjective voice. The tradition continued through the centuries with writers such as Rousseau, Baudelaire, Camus, and Sartre, among others, expanding the range of topics and styles within the genre.

In English usage, essai is typically translated as essay. The title of Montaigne’s work is frequently kept in its French form, Essais, or translated simply as The Essays, depending on edition. The term thus covers both practical trials and a distinctive literary form that blends inquiry, reflection, and prose composition.