UNDERSTANDING PROSE – DEFINITIONS AND KINDS OF PROSE

Group 5

1. ANDI SITI NURHALIZA MAPPATADANG – 200512501048

2. ANDI FALDI RAMADHAN – 200512501049
3. ANANDA EKA YUNIARTA – 200512501039
4. DITA MAHARANI ACHMAD - 200512501017
5. THRESIA GLORIA EMBU NGERA – 200512501016

➢ DEFINITIONS OF PROSE

Prose is a sentence and paragraph that is structured in a grammatical way, like language that flows in
natural patterns of everyday speech. Prose consists of paragraphs which includes a number of sentences
and that has an implied message or idea. Other definitions of prose by experts are:

1. The Establishment of Modern English Prose (1998), Ian Robinson observes that the term prose is
"surprisingly hard to define. . .. We shall return to the sense there may be in the old joke that prose
is not verse." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk, July 12, 1827) says that, “prose is the words
in their best order".
2. Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentlewomen, (1671) says that, “All that is not prose is verse; and all that
is not verse is prose”.
3. John Cheever, on accepting the National Medal for Literature, (1982) says that, “prose is where
one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends
it a youthful beauty."
4. Jeremy Bentham, quoted by M. St. J. Packe in The Life of John Stuart Mill, (1954) says that,
"Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short
of it."

➢ 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. The basic purpose of prose in writing is to
convey an idea, deliver information, or tell a story. The functions of prose in details are:

1. To Fulfil a story’s promise.

2. To Create a voice.
3. To Builds rapport through familiarity.
 ➢ KINDS OF PROSE

1. Fictional Prose

Fictional prose is an imaginary story which is usually written down that someone tells in everyday or
known as natural language. Fictional prose is 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. Although individuals label these stories by form and genre, a common thread is the use of
universal themes that trigger emotional responses from readers.

• Techniques Of Fictional Prose

Writers can use different techniques in this type of literature, such as metaphor, exposition and
narrative. One of the most popular ways to develop characters and move a plot forward is through
dialogue, which is a conversation between at least two characters. Authors also may use a variety
of viewpoints, such as first, second and third person.

• Forms/Style

Looking at form or style is another way to categorize prose fiction. These include historical,
picaresque, epistolary, Bildungsroman, social, science and romance fiction, as well as metafiction.
Within these groups are subcategories such as thriller, fantasy, mystery, drama, chick-lit and
comedy. Although a written work might fit into more than one form or subcategory, in general,
publishers usually like a single classification, because it typically helps in assigning submissions to
specific, specialized editors.

2. Non-Fictional Prose

Nonfictional prose, any literary work that is based mainly on fact, even though it may contain fictional
elements. Examples are the essay and biography. This type of literature differs from bald statements of
fact, such as those recorded in an old chronicle or inserted in a business letter or in an impersonal
message of mere information. As used in a broad sense, the term nonfictional prose literature here
designates writing intended to instruct (but does not include highly scientific and erudite writings in
which no aesthetic concern is evinced), to persuade, to convert, or to convey experience or reality
through “factual” or spiritual revelation. Separate articles cover biography and literary criticism.

• Elements of Non-Fictional Prose

Obviously, a world 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. 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. 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.

• Form/Style

The writing of nonfictional prose should not entail the tension. The monotony, and the self-
conscious craft of fiction writing. Flaubert and Maupassant are far less important in nonfictional
prose than in the novel and the short story. In essays, letters, reporting, and narratives of travels, the
author’s aim is often not to overpower his readers by giving them the impression that he knows
exactly where he is leading them, as a dramatist or a detective-story writer does.

There is also another manner of writing that is more attentive to the periodic cadences and elegance
of prose, in the style of the ancient Roman orator Cicero. A number of English writers have been
fond of that harmonious, and rhetorical prose, the taste for which may well have been fostered not
only by the familiarity with Cicero but also by the profound influence of the authorized version of
the Bible, Martin Luther’s translation of the New Testament and of the Old Testament likewise
moulded much of German prose and German sensibility for centuries.

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. They must know what resources they can draw from vivid sensations,
brilliant similes, balanced sentences, or sudden, epigrammatic, effects of surprise.

3. Heroic Prose
Heroic prose is a piece of prose that may be written down or recited out loud as an oral story that
follow the traditional structure used by oral expressionists. Examples are legends and tales.
• Prose Poetry

Prose poetry is a poetry that written in the form of prose and does not contain other poetic
attributes, such as rhythm and metaphors. These are some differences between prose poetry and
poetry itself.
 Prose
The language of prose is typically
straightforward without much
decoration.
Ideas are contained in sentences that
are arranged into paragraphs.
There are no line breaks. Sentences
run to the right margin.
Poetry
The language of poetry tends to be more
expressive or decorated, with comparisons,
rhyme, and rhythm contributing to a different
sound and feel.
Ideas are contained in lines that may or may
not be sentences.
Poetry uses line breaks for various reasons

The example of prose poetry, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost:

“The woods look lovely even though in the darkness and full of the mysterious depths. I do not
want to go back, but I have appointments to keep with much distance to go before I settle for the
night, or I will be late for all of them.”

The example of poetry, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost:

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

➢ The Examples of Prose in Writing

1. Erik Larson “The Devil in the White City” is a work of nonfiction that utilizes prose when
describing the situation around a local hospitals:

“With so many people packed among the steam engines, giant rotating wheels, horse-
drawn fire trucks, and rocketing bobsleds, the fair’s ambulances superintended by a
doctor named Gentles were constantly delivering bruised, bloody, and overheated
visitors to the exposition hospital.”

2. Mark Haddon also writes using prose in his novel “The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-Time” when his teenaged protagonist finds his The neighbor’s dog was killed:
 “It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the
lawn in front of Mrs. Shears’s house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running
on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the
dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead.”

➢ Examples of Prose in Literature

1. Nonfictional Prose, can be found in “Dust Tracks on a Road” Autobiography by Zora Neale
Hurston:

“I was born in a Negro town. I do not mean by that the black back-side of an average town.
Eatonville, Florida, is, and was at the time of my birth, a pure Negro town—charter, mayor,
council, town marshal and all.”

2. Fictional prose, can be found in the novel “A Confederacy of Dunces” by Jonh Kennedy Toole

“Ignatius himself was dressed comfortably and sensibly. The hunting cap prevented head
colds. The voluminous tweed trousers were durable and permitted unusually free
locomotion.”

3. Heroic Prose, heroic prose is usually a legends. The twelfth-century Irish tales revolving around
the mythical warrior Finn McCool are an example of heroic prose.

4. Prose in Poetry, One of the poetry made in prose, not rhyme, is the poetry by Jose Olivarez
entitled “Ars Poetica”.