Prose

PROSE

A.What is Prose ?

The word prose comes from the Latin  prosa oratio, meaning straight forward, hence the term "prosaic", which is often seen a pejorative. Prose describes the type of writing that prose embodies, unadorned with obvious stylistic devices. Prose writing is usually adopted for the description of facts or the discussion of whatever one's thoughts are, incorporated in free flowing speech.

A prose is a spoken language that is represented in its ordinary form, without metrical structure. This term can also be defined as a common place that is mostly visited by people who have common interests.  In literature, prose refers to any spoken or written language that is in it's ordinary form. It lacks any formal pattern or metrical structure. It applies a natural flow of speech instead of rhythmic structure.

Prose is an imaginary story, usually written down, that someone tells in everyday by natural language. The opposite of nonfiction and poetry, it lets people leave reality, exploring characters and events that typically are limited only by the scope of the writer’s imagination. It generally uses a variety of techniques such as narrative and has a wide range in terms of length.

Prose is the term for any invented literary narrative or, more broadly, anything made up. In literature, it refers to novels, short stories, and other works of art that do not purport to tell true stories. While they may be inspired by real events or people, fiction writers create characters, dialogue, and plots entirely from their imaginations. Story telling forms the basis of most other entertainment media, including movies, television, and comic books. Science fiction, mystery stories, and romances are among the popular subsets, or genres, of fiction.

In a broader sense, fiction remains the primary form of narrative in a variety of media. Movies, television shows, and stage dramas still rely on the fictional form to tell stories. Comics have proved capable of both short stories and extended narratives in a variety of genres. Even video games use fictional constructs to enhance the gamer’s experience. While the future of print media itself is uncertain, the art of the story has already established a strong presence in the realm of electronic media.

B.Genre of Prose

The classification of literary works into different genres has been a major concern of literary theory, which has since then produced a number of divergent and sometimes even contradictory categories. Among the various attempts to classify literature into genres, the triad epic, drama, and poetry has proved to be the most common in modern literary criticism. Because the epic was widely replaced by the new prose form of the novel in the eighteenth century, recent classifications prefer the terms fiction, drama, and poetry as designations of the three major literary genres.

The novel emerged as the most important form of prose fiction in the eighteenth century, its precursors go back to the oldest texts of literary history. The majority of traditional epics revolve around a hero who has to fulfill a number of tasks of national or cosmic significance in a multiplicity of episodes. Classical epics in particular, through their roots in myth, history, and religion, reflect a self-contained world-view of their particular periods and nationalities. With the obliteration of a unified Weltanschauung in early modern times, the position of the epic weakened and it was eventually replaced by the novel, the mouthpiece of relativism that was emerging in all aspects of cultural discourse.

Although traditional epics are written in verse, they clearly distinguish themselves from other forms of poetry by length, narrative structure, depiction of characters, and plot patterns and are therefore regarded—together with the romance—as precursors of the modern novel. As early as classical times, but more strongly in the late Middle Ages, the romance established itself as an independent genre. The romance is nevertheless considered a forerunner of the novel mainly because of its tendency toward a focused plot and unified point of view.

The scope of the traditional epic is usually broad, the romance condenses the action and orients the plot toward a particular goal. The protagonist or main character is depicted in more detail and with greater care, thereby moving beyond the classical epic whose main character functions primarily as the embodiment of abstract heroic ideals. In the romances, individual traits, such as insecurity, weakness, or other facets of character come to the foreground, anticipating distinct aspects of the novel. The individualization of the protagonist, the deliberately perspectival point of view, and above all the linear plot structure, oriented toward a specific climax which no longer centers on national or cosmic problems, are among the crucial features that distinguish the romance from epic poetry.

Novel is a long prose narrative that describes fictional characters and events, usually in the form of a sequential story. The novel, which emerged in Spain during the seventeenth century and in England during the eighteenth century, employs these elements in a very deliberate manner, although the early novels remain deeply rooted in the older genre of the epic. In the plot structure of the early novel, which often tends to be episodic, elements of the epic survive in a new attire. In England, Tristram Shandy (1759–67) mark the beginning of this new literary genre, which replaces the epic, thus becoming one of the most productive genres of modern literature.

The newly established novel is often characterized by the terms “realism” and “individualism,” thereby summarizing some of the basic innovations of this new medium. While the traditional epic exhibited a cosmic and allegorical dimension, the modern novel distinguishes itself by grounding the plot in a distinct historical and geographical reality. The allegorical and typified epic hero metamorphoses into the protagonist of the novel, with individual and realistic character traits.

These features of the novel which, in their attention to individualism and realism, reflect basic sociohistorical tendencies of the eighteenth century, soon made the novel a dominant literary genre. The novel thus mirrors the modern disregard for the collective spirit of the Middle Ages that heavily relied on allegory and symbolism. To this day, the novel still maintains its leading position as the genre which produces the most innovations in literature.

The term “novel,” however, subsumes a number of subgenres such as the picaresque novel, which relates the experiences of a vagrant rogue (from the Spanish “picaro”) in his conflict with the norms of society. Structured as an episodic narrative, the picaresque novel tries to lay bare social injustice in a satirical way. The Bildungsroman (novel of education), generally referred to by its German name, describes the development of a protagonist from childhood to maturity. The epistolary novel, which uses letters as a means of first-person narration. The historical novel, whose actions take place within a realistic historical context. Related to the historical novel is a more recent trend often labeled new journalism, which uses the genre of the novel to rework incidents based on real events. The satirical novel, highlights weaknesses of society through the exaggeration of social conventions. The utopian novels or science fiction novels create alternative worlds as a means of criticizing real sociopolitical conditions, as in the classic very popular forms are the gothic novel and the detective novel.

The short story concise form of prose fiction, has received less attention from literary scholars than the novel. As with the novel, the roots of the short story lie in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Story, myth, and fairy tale relate to the oldest types of textual manifestations, “texts” which were primarily orally transmitted. The term “tale” (from “to tell”), like the German “Sage” (from “sagen”—“to speak”), reflects this oral dimension inherent in short fiction. Even the Bible whose structures and narrative patterns resemble modern short stories. Other forerunners of this subgenre of fiction are ancient satire and the aforementioned romance.

Indirect precursors of the short story are medieval and early modern narrative cycles. On their way to Canterbury, the pilgrims tell different, rather self-contained tales which are only connected through Chaucer’s use of a frame story.

The short story emerged as a more or less independent text type at the end of the eighteenth century, parallel to the development of the novel and the newspaper. Regularly issued magazines of the nineteenth century exerted a major influence on the establishment of the short story by providing an ideal medium for the publication of this prose genre of limited volume. Today, magazines like the New Yorker (since 1925) still function as privileged organs for first publications of short stories. Many of the early novels appeared as serial stories in these magazines before being published as independent books.

While the novel has always attracted the interest of literary theorists, the short story has never actually achieved the status held by book-length fiction. The short story, however, surfaces in comparative definitions of other prose genres such as the novel or its shorter variants, the novella and novelette. A crucial feature commonly identified with the short story is its impression of unity since it can be read—in contrast to the novel—in one sitting without interruption. The plot of the short story has to be highly selective, entailing an idiosyncratic temporal dimension that usually focuses on one central moment of action. The slow and gradual build-up of suspense in the novel must be accelerated in the short story by means of specific techniques. The action of the short story therefore often commences close to the climax (in medias res—“the middle of the matter”), reconstructing the preceding context and plot development through flashbacks. Focusing on one main figure or location, the setting and the characters generally receive less detailed and careful depiction than in the novel. In contrast to the novel’s generally descriptive style, the short story, for the simple reason of limited length, has to be more suggestive. While the novel experiments with various narrative perspectives, the short story usually chooses one particular point of view, relating the action through the eyes of one particular figure or narrator. The novella or novelette, holds an intermediary position between novel and short story, since its length and narratological elements cannot be strictly identified with either of the two genres.

As this juxtaposition of the main elements of the novel and the short story shows, attempts to explain the nature of these genres rely on different methodological approaches, among them reception theory with respect to reading without interruption, formalist notionsfor the analysis of plot structures, and contextual approaches for delineating their boundaries with other comparable genres. The terms plot, time, character, setting, narrative perspective, and style emerge not only in the definitions and characterizations of the genre of the novel, but also function as the most important areas of inquiry in film and drama. Since these aspects can be isolated most easily in prose fiction, they will be dealt with in greater detail in the following section by drawing on examples from novels and short stories.

In genre of prose, there are the most important elements:

aC.      Plot

Plot is the logical interaction of the various thematic elements of a text which lead to a change of the original situation as presented at the outset of the narrative. An ideal traditional plot line encompasses the following four sequential levels:

exposition—complication—climax or turning point—resolution

The exposition or presentation of the initial situation is disturbed by a complication or conflict which produces suspense and eventually leads to a climax, crisis, or turning point. The climax is followed by a resolution of the complication (French denouement), with which the text usually ends. Most traditional fiction, drama, and film employ this basic plot structure, which is also called linear plot since its different elements follow a chronological order.

Flashback and foreshadowing introduce information concerning the past or future into the narrative. The first-person narrator posthumously relates the events that lead to his death while drifting dead in a swimming pool. The only break with a linear plot or chronological narrative is the anticipation of the film’s ending—the death of its protagonist—thus eliminating suspense as an important element of plot.

bD.   Characters

While formalist approaches to the study of literature traditionally focus on plot and narrative structure, methods informed by psychoanalysis shift the center of attention to the text’s characters. A psychological approach is merely one way of evaluating characters; it is also possible to analyze character presentation in the context of narratological structures. Generally speaking, characters in a text can be rendered either as types or as individuals. A typified character in literature is dominated by one specific trait and is referred to as a flat character. The term round character usually denotes a persona with more complex and differentiated features.

Typified characters often represent the general traits of a group of persons or abstract ideas. Medieval allegorical depictions of characters preferred typification in order to personify vices, virtues, or philosophical and religious positions.

The individualization of a character, has evolved into a main feature of the genre of the novel. Many modern fictional texts reflect a tension between these modes of representation by introducing both elements simultaneously. Herman Melville’s (1819–91) novel Moby Dick (1851), combines allegorical and individualistic elements in the depiction of its main character in order to lend a universal dimension to the action which, despite being grounded in the particularities of a round figure, nevertheless points beyond the specific individual.

Both typified and individualized characters can be rendered in a text through showing and telling as two different modes of presentation. The explanatory characterization, or telling, describes a person through a narrator.

Dramatic characterization, or showing, does away with the position of an obvious narrator, thus avoiding any overt influence on the reader by a narrative mediator. This method of presentation creates the impression on the reader that he or she is able to perceive the acting figures without any intervening agency, as if witnessing a dramatic performance. The image of a person is “shown” solely through his or her actions and utterances without interfering commentary, thereby suggesting an “objective” perception which leaves interpretation and evaluation solely to the judgment of interpretation and evaluation solely to the judgement to the reader.

As shown above, one can distinguish between two basic kinds of characters (round or flat), as well as between two general modes of presentation (showing or telling):

Kinds of characters

typified character                                            individualized character

flat                                                                   round

Modes of presentation

explanatory method                                        dramatic method

narration                                                          dialogue—monologue

Similar to typification and individualization, explanatory and dramatic methods hardly ever appear in their pure forms, but rather as hybrids of various degrees, since the narrator often also acts as a character in the text. Questions concerning character presentation are always connected with problems of narrative perspective and are therefore hard to isolate or deal with individually.

cE.  Point of view

The term point of view, or narrative perspective, characterizes the way in which a text presents persons, events, and settings. The subtleties of narrative perspectives developed parallel to the emergence of the novel and can be reduced to three basic positions: the action of a text is either mediated through an exterior, unspecified narrator (omniscient point of view), through a person involved in the action (first-person narration), or presented without additional commentary (figural narrative situation). This tripartite structure can only summarize the most extreme manifestations which hardly ever occur in their pure form; individual literary works are usually hybrids combining elements of various types of narrative situations.

The most common manifestations of narrative perspectives in prose fiction can, therefore, be structured according to the following pattern:

omniscient point of view                                            first-person narration

through external narrator who

refers to protagonist in the third person                      by protagonist or by minor character

figural narrative situation

through figures acting in the text

Texts with an omniscient point of view refer to the acting figures in the third person and present the action from an allknowing, God-like perspective. Sometimes the misleading term thirdperson narration is also applied for this narrative situation. Disembodiment of the narrative agent, which does away with a narrating persona, easily allows for changes in setting, time, and action, while simultaneously providing various items of information beyond the range and knowledge of the acting figures.

First-person narration renders the action as seen through a participating figure, who refers to her- or himself in the first person. First-person narrations can adopt the point of view either of the protagonist or of a minor figure. The majority of novels in first-person narration use, of course, the protagonist (main character) as narrator. These first-person narrations by protagonists aim at a supposedly authentic representation of the subjective experiences and feelings of the narrator. This proximity to the protagonist can be avoided by introducing aminor character as first-person narrator.

In the figural narrative situation, the narrator moves into the background, suggesting that the plot is revealed solely through the actions of the characters in the text. This literary technique is a relatively recent phenomenon, one which has been developed with the rise of the modern novel, mostly in order to encourage the reader to judge the action without an intervening commentator.

If a text shifts the emphasis from exterior aspects of the plot to the inner world of a character, its narrative technique is usually referred to as stream-of-consciousness technique. Related narratological phenomena are interior monologue and free indirect discourse. The narrator disappears, leaving the thoughts and psychic reactions of a participating figure as the sole mediators of the action. Influenced by Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, these techniques found their way into modernist prose fiction after World War I. Based on associations in the subconscious of a fictitious persona, it reflects a groundbreaking shift in cultural paradigms during the first decades of the twentieth century, when literature, under the influence of psychoanalysis and related sciences, shifted its main focus from the sociologically descriptive goals of the nineteenth century to psychic phenomena of the individual. These experimental narrative techniques of character presentation became the major structural features of modernism, thereby characterizing an entire literary era at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Modernist and postmodernist novels introduce these techniques in very overt ways, often even changing narrative perspectives within one text in order to highlight decisive shifts in the course of action or narrative.

dF.    Setting

Setting is another aspect traditionally included in analyses of prose fiction, and it is relevant to discussions of other genres, too. The term ‘g’ “setting” denotes the location, historical period, and social surroundings in which the action of a text develops.

In the gothic novel and certain other forms of prose fiction, setting is one of the crucial elements of the genre as such.

This example once again highlights the fact that the various levels of fiction, including plot, setting, point of view, and characters, tend to receive full meaning through their interaction with one another. In the interpretation of literary texts, it is therefore important to see these structural elements not as self-contained and isolated entities, but rather as interdependent elements whose full meaning is only revealed in the context of the other features and overall content of the text. Ideally, the structural analysis of these levels in literary texts should not stop at the mere description of these features, but rather show to what ends they are employed.

CONCLUSION

Prose comes from the Latin words prosa oratio, which mean "direct speech," prose is the dominant form in literature. It the accepted mode of writing for epic, novel and short story. This form is also used on the Internet and in everyday business communication. Prose is an imaginary story, usually written down, that someone tells in everyday by natural language.

 The opposite prose (fiction) and poetry (non-fiction), it lets people leave reality, exploring characters and events that typically are limited only by the scope of the writer’s imagination. It generally uses a variety of techniques such as narrative and has a wide range in terms of length.

There are three major prose genres, epic, novel and short story. For the romance established itself as an independent genre.

And there are four  important elements in prose, plot, characters, point of view and setting.

 REFERENCES:

Clarer mario. 1998. An Introduction To Literary Studies. English: Routledge

Literature.com

Wikipedia.com                                                             

Yahoo.answer.com