CHAPTER II

DISUCUSSION
A. Prose Understanding
The word ‘prose’ is taken from the Latin ‘prosus’ which means
‘direct’ or ‘straight’. Broadly speaking, prose is direct or straight forward
writing.
In ordinary prose, the aim is to communicate one’s thoughts and
feelings. What is important then is (a) what one wants to say, and (b) how
one chooses to say it. What is said is the topic or subject of the
composition. How it is said is the style or manner in which the topic is
expressed. The style of course greatly depends upon who we are writing
for and what sort of personality we have. There are different topics and
different styles. (Bitstream, n.d., p. 2)
B. The Characteristics of Prose

Prose is organized by grouping complete sentences into

paragraphs. Prose can be further sub-categorized according to structure or
subject matter. Common structural classifications include novels, novellas,
short stories, memoirs and biographies. Common subject matter
categories, commonly referred to as genre include, but are not limited to,
romance, comedy and horror. These two sub-categories are not necessarily
separate with prose works classified by their structure and genre.
Prose is performed in the shape of dramas and media broadcasts.
Dramas, commonly known as plays, are recorded predominantly in prose
dialogue and enacted by actors on the stage. Television and radio
broadcasts similarly have a prose script from which they report.
Nonfiction is a broad spectrum of prose with personal as well as
objective accounts. Testimonials, philosophy, journals and a range of other
physical records are written in prose. Nonfiction is generally written to
pass on knowledge. (World View, n.d., para 1-4)
C. The Function of Prose
Prose is used when the writer wants to tell a story in a
straightforward manner. It should be used when the writer wants their
writing to resemble everyday speech.
While there have been many critical debates over the correct and
valid construction of prose, the reason for its adoption can be attributed to
its loosely-defined structure, which most writers feel comfortable using

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when expressing or conveying their ideas and thoughts. It is the standard

style of writing used for most spoken dialogues, fictional as well as topical
and factual writing, and discourses. It is also the common language used in
newspapers, magazines, literature, encyclopedias, broadcasting,
philosophy, law, history, the sciences, and many other forms of
communication. (Prose, n.d., para 1)
D. Types of Prose
1. Fiction Prose
This means that it is a product of the writer‘s imagination. In
prose fiction, the writer tells a fictitious story to his readers to educate
or entertain or to do both.
Prose fiction is an artistic work that ―has a personal narrative,
a hero to identify with fictional inventions, style, and suspense – in
short anything that might be handled with the rather personal ventures
of creativity and artistic freedom. It may exaggerate or distort facts or
the story may be completely an invention of the writer. It depends on
the style of the writer and or what the writer wants to achieve. The
story in prose fiction is invented by the writer but is presented in a
realistic manner.
Prose fiction, whether in the form of the novel or the short story, is
unarguably the most popular and widely consumed literary genre. One
only has to see the proliferation of bookstalls at railway stations and
airports, for example, and the predominance of novels over other forms
of writing made available in such locations to realise the appeal of
fiction. (Joseph, 2018, p. 2).
The examples of prose fiction are short story, novel, novella,
Folktale (legend, fable, parable).
2. Nonfiction Prose
Nonfiction prose, any literary work that is based primarily on
facts, even though it may contain fictional element. Examples are
essays and biographies. Defining nonfiction prose literature is a very
challenging task. This type of literature different from a bald fact
statement, as recorded in an old chronic or inserted in a business letters
or in impersonal messages from mere information. As used in a broad
sense, The term nonfiction prose literature here refers to writing
intended to teach (but is not including highly scientific and scientific
writings where no aesthetic concern is evidenced), for to persuade, to
repent, or to convey an experience or reality through 'factual' or
spiritual revelation. Separate articles include biographies and literary
criticisms.
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a. Natural
The non-fiction process genre covers an almost unlimited
variety of themes, and they assume a lot shape. In quantitative
terms, if it can apply in things that cannot be measured, they are
perhaps including more than half of everything written in countries
with literature themselves. The non-fiction process genre has
developed in almost all countries with progress literature. Genres
include political and political, biographical and political writing
autobiographical literature, religious writings, and philosophical
writings, and moral or religious.

b. Elements
Obviously, a realm as boundless and diverse as nonfictional
prose literature cannot be characterized as having any unity of
intent, of technique, or of style. It can be defined, very loosely,
only by what it is not. Many exceptions, in such a mass of writings,
can always be brought up to contradict any rule or generalization.
No prescriptive treatment is acceptable for the writing of essays,
of aphorisms, of literary journalism, of polemical controversy, of
travel literature, of memoirs and intimate diaries. No norms are
recognized to determine whether a dialogue, a confession, a piece
of religious or of scientific writing, is excellent, mediocre, or
outright bad, and each author has to be relished, and appraised,
chiefly in his own right. The only technique, the English critic F.R.
Leavis wrote in 1957, is that which compels words to express an
intensively personal way of feeling. Intensity is probably useful as
a standard; yet it is a variable, and often elusive, quality, possessed
by polemicists and by ardent essayists to a greater extent than by
others who are equally great. Loving, and taking the liberties of a
lover was Virginia Woolf’s characterization of the 19th-century
critic William Hazlitt’s style: it instilled passion into his critical
essays. But other equally significant English essayists of the same
century, such as Charles Lamb or Walter Pater, or the French critic
Hippolyte Taine, under an impassive mask, loved too, but
differently. Still other nonfictional writers have been detached,
seemingly aloof, or, like the 17th-century French epigrammatist La
Rochefoucauld, sarcastic. Their intensity is of another sort.

c. Style
In the 20th century that type of prose lost favour with
American and British readers, who ceased to cherish Latin orators
and Biblical prose as their models. In German literature, however,
in which harmonious balance and eloquence were more likely to be
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admired, and in other languages more directly derived from Latin,

a musical style, akin to a prolonged poem in prose, was cultivated
more assiduously, as exemplified in Italian in the writings of
Gabriele D’Annunzio, in French in those by André Gide, and in
German in Die Aufzeichnungen des Malta Lau rids Brigge (The
Notebooks of Malta Lau rids Brigge) by the poet Rainer Maria
Rilke. Such an elaborate style appears to be more easily tolerated
by the readers in nonfictional writing, with its lack of cumulative
continuity and, generally speaking, its more restricted size, than in
novels such as Pater’s Marius the Epicurean (1885) and
occasionally in Thomas Mann’s fiction, in which such a style tends
to pall on the reader. Similarly, it is easier for the nonfictional
prose writer to weave into his style faint suggestions of irony,
archaisms, alliterations, and even interventions of the author that
might prove catastrophic to credibility in fiction. Critics have
argued that too close attention to style was harmful to the sweep
necessary to fiction: they have contended that many of the greatest
novelists, such as Dickens, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, and Zola at times
wrote badly; assuredly, they treated language carelessly more than
once. Essayists, historians, orators, and divines often affect a
happy-go-lucky ease so as to put them on the same footing with the
common reader, but they realize that language and style are vital.
They must know what resources they can draw from vivid
sensations, brilliant similes, balanced sentences, or sudden,
epigrammatic, effects of surprise.

d. Approaches
In terms of approach, that is, the attitude of the writer as it can
be inferred from the writing, the distinguishing features of
nonfictional prose writings are the degree of presence of the ego
and of the use of a subjective, familiar tone. Such devices are also
used, of course, by authors of fiction, but to a lesser extent.
Similarly, the basic modes of writing—the descriptive, the
narrative, the expository, and the argumentative—are found in both
nonfictional literature and in fiction, but in different degrees.

e. Narrative
The narrative element is less conspicuous in writing that does
not purport to relate a story than in fictional works, but there is a
role for narrative in letters, diaries, autobiographies, and historical
writing. Most often, an incident is graphically related by a witness,
as in letters or memoirs; an anecdote may serve to illustrate a moral
advice in an essay; or an entertaining encounter may be inserted
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into an essay or a travel sketch. Digression here represents the

utmost in art; it provides a relief from the persistent attention
required when the author is pursuing his purpose more seriously.
Similarly, such writing provides a pleasant contrast to the rigid
structure of the majority of novels since the late 19th century. In
historical writing, however, simplicity and clarity of narrative are
required, though it may be interspersed with speeches, with
portraits, or with moral and polemical allusions. In other forms of
nonfictional prose, the meandering fancy of the author may well
produce an impression of freedom and of truth to life unattainable
by the more carefully wrought novel. Many writers have confessed
to feeling relieved when they ceased to create novels and shifted to
impromptu sketches or desultory essays. The surrealist essayists of
the 20th century poured their scorn on detective fiction as the most
fiercely logical form of writing. In contrast, the author of essays or
other nonfictional prose may blend dreams and facts, ventures into
the illogical, and delightful eccentricities.

3. Heroic Prose
Heroic literature is a genre of literature dedicated to the
presentation of heroic legend. There are other genres (like
mythography or pseudo history) and media (like theatre) that conserve
heroic legend, but this is the genre that really gave the word "heroic"
its flavor: It tries to hold the audience in awe with the larger-than-life
deeds and adventures of those famous people of the old time who were
so much stronger and braver than folks today.
Heroic literature comes in different formats:
a. Heroic lay a.k.a. Heroic Ballad: Narrative poem of short to
moderate length that tells one episode or adventure from the career
of a hero. It is the oldest format and already existed in oral form
before writing. It is intended to be recited or sung to an audience
and can be heard "at a piece."

b. Heroic Verse Epic: Narrative poem that is (much) longer and tells
a more complex story than a Heroic Lay. It may tell a sequence of
legendary events with a lot of characters and detail, or it may try to
recount the life of a hero in its entirety. The earliest epics may have
been composed orally by welding several heroic lays together, but
the format was greatly furthered by the arrival of writing, which
allowed poets and performers to keep track of much longer poems
without their heads exploding (speaking figuratively). It is too long
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to be heard at a piece and therefore frequently divided into handy

chapters or sections.

c. Heroic Tale and Heroic Prose Epic (a.k.a. Heroic Romance):

Heroic legend as written prose narratives. While heroic legends
certainly have been told in oral prose since the dawn of time, as a
written genre this is actually the youngest type of heroic literature,
as the format only became popular at a time when reading and
writing was sufficiently widespread so that tales of ancient heroes
were no longer exclusively intended for performance by
professional singers or reciters.
Plot wise, heroic lays and epics revolve around one or
several of three main conflicts:
a. Man vs. Monster: The simplest conflict that usually follows a
Black and White
b. Morality model: Good hero fights and vanquishes bad and ugly
monster.
c. Man vs. Man: Much closer to common human reality, heroes in
such conflicts often come away much less lustrous, as the
morality model tends towards Grey and Gray Morality.
d. Man vs. Fate: In settings where gods are held responsible for
human fortunes, this will often also mean Man vs. God(s).
Differently from the other two conflicts, heroes can never
actually win this fight. Rather, heroism in such kinds of stories
is demonstrated by enduring the blows of fate with heroic
determination.

4. Prose Poem
These texts are personality oriented; the writer in these texts
chooses appropriate personalities; distributes his / her thoughts among
them; encourages interaction among them based on his / her thoughts,
creates adventures until the addresses discover his thought, aim and his
message in the emotional space which can be con-ceiled in the heart of
events or adventures by a simple mechanism and makes (creates) a
permanent or everlasting work in their mind. Types of this prose are as
fictions, myths, stories, narrations and articles which were current or
common from the beginning of Persian prose in the Tasmanian Era
(4th century of A.H.) to the beginning of Safavieh Era (10th Century
of A.H.) with various themes. In this era, story – writing is being
added to these patterns and in the Ghajar Era (12th and 13thcentury of
A.H.), European stories by translation prose became prevalent in the
Persian prose and finally, in the Pahlavi Era, form or frame of story
became wide-spread in the Persian prose and abundant stories short or
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long stories were being written in different themes; afterwards, novel

became prevalent; then, dramas and scenarios or scripts with various
themes were added. Current forms in this type of prose are tale, kinds
of stories, novels, dramas and scripts.

5. Poliphoric
Prose characterized by the use of poetic devices, as alliteration,
assonance, rhyme, etc., and especially by an emphasis on rhythm
notstrictly metered. In literature, polyphony (Russian: полифония) is a
feature of narrative, which includes a diversity of points of view and
voices. The concept was introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin, based on the
musical concept polyphony. Bakhtin claimed that polyphony and
heteroglossia are the defining features of the novel as a literary genre.

For Bakhtin the primary example of polyphony was

Dostoevsky's prose. Bakhtin argued that Dostoyevsky, unlike previous
novelists, does not appear to aim for a 'single vision' and goes beyond
simply describing situations from various angles. Dostoevsky
engendered fully dramatic unbearable crescendo (The Brothers
Karamazov).

Categories are intended to group together pages on similar

subjects. They are implemented by a. MediaWiki feature that adds any
page with a text like in its wikimarkup to the automated listing that is
the category with name XYZ. Categories help readers to find, and
navigate around, a subject area, to see pages sorted by title, and to thus
find article relationships.

Categories are normally found at the bottom of an article page.

Clicking a category name brings up a category page listing the articles
(or other pages) that have been added to that particular category. There
may also be a section listing the subcategories of that category. The
subcategorization feature makes it possible to organize categories into
tree-like structures to aid navigation.
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The term category does refer to both the title of a category page
—the category pagename—and the category itself. Keeping this in
mind while reading about categorization, plus learning a category page
layout is a worthwhile investment in research techniques. (See also the
search box parameter "incategory".) The layout of a category page is
mostly text, but see about displaying category treesbelow.

6. Village Prose

A movement called ―village prose‖ cultivated nostalgic

descriptions of rural life. Particularly noteworthy is Valentin
Rasputin’s elegiac novel Proshchaniye s Matyoroy (1976; Farewell to
Matyora) about a village faced with destruction to make room for a
hydroelectric plant. Village Prose(Russian: Деревенская проза, or
Деревенская литература) was a movementin Soviet literature
beginning during theKhrushchev Thaw, which included works that
focused on the Soviet rural communities. Some point to the critical
essays oncollectivization in Novyi mir by Valentin Ovechkin as the
starting point of Village Prose, though most of the subsequent works
associated with the genre are fictional novels and short stories.Authors
associated with Village Prose include Aleksander Yashin,Vasily
Belov,Fyodor Abramov, Valentin Rasputin, Boris Mozhayev, Vasily
Shukshin. Some critics also count Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn among the
Village Prose writers for his short novel Matryona's House.

Many Village Prose works espoused an idealized picture of

traditional Russian village life and became increasingly associated
withRussian nationalism in the 1970s and 1980s. Some have argued
that the nationalist subtext of Village Prose is the reason the Soviet
government remained supportive of Village Prose writers like Valentin
Rasputin (who became a member of the Writers' Union) during the
Time of Stagnation, even while they began to more heavily censor
other dissenting movements, like Youth and Urban Prose.
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7. Alliterative Prose

Alliterative prose, prose that uses alliteration and some of the

techniques of alliterative verses. Notable examples are from Old
English and Middle English, including works by the Anglo-Saxon
writer Aelfric and the so-called Katherine Group of five Middle
English devotional works.

A tradition of Old and Middle English prose elevated in style

by the employment of some of the techniques of alliterative verse. Its
most distinguished exponents are Ælfric and Wulfstan in Old English,
and the writers of the ‘Katherine Group’ in Middle English.
(Britannica, n.d., para. 1)
 CHAPTER III
CONCLUSION

A. Conclusion

The word ‘prose’ is taken from the Latin ‘prosus’ which means
‘direct’ or ‘straight’. Broadly speaking, prose is direct or straight
forward writing. In ordinary prose, the aim is to communicate one’s
thoughts and feelings.

the prose function is used when the writer wants to tell a story
directly. This should be used when writers want their writing to
resemble everyday speech and make people hear it become interested
in the story.

There are several types of prose, namely:

1. Fiction prose
2. Nonfiction prose
3. Heroic prose
4. Pholyphonic prose
5. Village prose
6. Alliterative prose

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 REFERENCES

Ihemekwa, Joseph T. (2018). Prose Fiction: An Overview. Retrieved from

Academia database.
World View. (n.d.). What are The Characteristics of Prose?. Retrieved February
10, 2019 from https://www.reference.com/world-view/characteristics-
prose-f447e9e41e4b1e90
Prose. (n.d.). Example and Definiton of Prose. Retrieved February 10, 2020 from
https://literarydevices.net/prose/#
Bitsream. (n.d.). ‘Understanding Prose’ : An Introduction. Retrieved Februari 10,
2020 from http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/27394/1/Unit-
1.pdf
Britannica. (n.d). Alliterative Prose. Retrieved Februari 11, 2020 from
https://www.britannica.com/art/alliterative-prose

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