apologia

noun

1. A written defense of a position or belief.

   “Although I've enumerated some of the academic traditions and debates that have animated this book, it is not my purpose to offer a full apologia in these brief pages.”

   ““Gone With the Wind” was published in 1936, and despite heroic efforts over the last seven decades to transform it into something else, the novel stands as an apologia for the Old South — […]”

   “The apologia his [Gabriel García Márquez] sons contribute at the beginning of the book is unconvincing, and their final excuse is particularly hard to swallow:[…]”