What is a prose work

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Prose is all around us. It is in life and in books. Prose is our everyday language.

Fictional prose is an unmetered (a special form of organization of sounding speech), non-rhyming narrative.

A prose work is a literary text written without rhyme, which is its main difference from poetry. Prose works are both fictional and non-fiction, sometimes they are intertwined, as, for example, in biographies or memoirs.

How did the prose or epic work come about

Prose came to the world of literature from Ancient Greece. It was there that poetry first appeared, and then prose as a term. The first prose works were myths, traditions, legends, fairy tales. These genres were defined by the Greeks as non-artistic, mundane. These were religious, everyday or historical narratives, which received the definition of "prose".

In the ancient world, highly artistic poetry was in the first place, prose was in second place, as a kind of opposition. The situation began to change only in the second half of the Middle Ages. Prose genres began to develop and expand. Novels, short stories andshort stories.

In the 19th century, the prose writer pushed the poet into the background. The novel, short story became the main art forms in literature. Finally, the prose work has taken its rightful place.

Prose is classified by size: small and large. Consider the main artistic genres.

Large prose work: views

A novel is a prose work that is distinguished by the length of the narrative and a complex plot that is fully developed in the work, and the novel may also have side storylines in addition to the main one.

Novelists were Honoré de Balzac, Daniel Defoe, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Ernest Hemingway, Erich Maria Remarque and many others.

Examples of the prose works of Russian novelists can make a separate book-list. These are works that have become classics. For example, such as "Crime and Punishment" and "Idiot" by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, "The Gift" and "Lolita" by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, "Fathers and Sons" by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, "A Hero of Our Time" Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov and so on.

An epic is an epic work, larger in volume than a novel, and describing major historical events or responding to national issues, more often both.

The most significant and famous epics in Russian literature are "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, "Quiet Don" by Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov and "Peter the Great" by Alexei Nikolayevich Tolstoy.

Small Prose: Views

Novella is a short work, comparable to a story, but with more eventfulness. The story of the novella originates in oral folklore, in parables and legends.

The novelists were Edgar Poe, HG Wells; Guy de Maupassant and Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin also wrote short stories.

The story is a small prose work, characterized by a small number of characters, one storyline and a detailed description of the details.

The works of Chekhov, Bunin, Paustovsky are rich in stories.

An essay is a prose work that can easily be confused with a story. But still there are significant differences: a description of only real events, the absence of fiction, a combination of fiction and non-fiction, as a rule, touching on social problems and the presence of more descriptiveness than in the story.

Essays are portrait and historical, problematic and travel. They can also mix with each other. For example, a historical essay may also contain a portrait or problematic one.

Essays are some impressions or thoughts of the author in connection with a specific topic. It has free composition. This type of prose combines the functions of a literary essay and a journalistic article. It may also have something in common with a philosophical treatise.

Medium prose genre - short story

The story is on the border between the story andnovel. In terms of volume, it cannot be attributed to either small or large prose works.

In Western literature, the story is called a "short novel". Unlike the novel, the story always has one storyline, but it also develops fully and fully, so it cannot be attributed to the genre of the story.

There are many examples of stories in Russian literature. Here are just a few: Karamzin's "Poor Liza", Chekhov's "Steppe", Dostoyevsky's "Netochka Nezvanov", Zamyatin's "Uyezdnoe", Bunin's "The Life of Arsenyev", Pushkin's "The Stationmaster".

In foreign literature, one can name, for example, “Rene” by Chateaubriand, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” by Conan Doyle, “The Tale of Mr. Sommer” by Suskind.