Talk:Prose
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Is prose a genre? Would class be a better word? --bodnotbod 16:07, May 5, 2004 (UTC)
Contents |
[edit] Cleanup
I'll try to dedicate some time to clean this article up within the next few days.
[edit] of course
Of course prose is a genre,you dumb faggat. A genre is a category that said writing falls into, e.g. romance, etc. The genre of 'prose' is decribing the way to story is told. It is clearly a genre.
I.G. Mells
[edit] Not Quite
If we say prose is a 'genre', then what are all the groups of writing we clearly recognize as 'genres', e.g. romance, etc. This pushes the word 'genre' towards being meaningless--if everything is a genre, then nothing is a genre.
Prose, poetry, and dialogue are different from romances, sonnets, and knock-knock jokes the same way that a genus is different from a species.
Sah65 21:29, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] On Genre
Not necessarily, mells. You're correct in your genre definition, but prose isn't a genre so much as a style. Rephrase your definition -- "A genre is a category that said writing falls into, e.g. prose" -- it doesn't work as well. Perhaps "class" is a better definition for prose. Prose is a genre no more than journalism is a genre. It's a group, a category.
Onto the article -- I think the article could use a list of well-known prose authors, both modern and older. The article defines it at points as anything but poetry. It expounds on that, but examples would be nice, since the very nature of prose as described herein makes it difficult to discern what is prose and what is just a novel.
Count Zero 09:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] example
Why is the example of prose writing given a translation of remarks by a French poet? Wouldn't it make sense to quote one of the famous 19th century prose writers - Hazlitt or Carlyle or Ruskin or someone like that? john k 03:01, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Vandalism?
"Once a poem is raped and pillaged" is in the current entry for this. Is this deliberate, if so, can someone please elaborate on it?
- Yes, that was vandalism. It's gone. --Hyperbole 00:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Not sure if it is vandalism or not
Most of the second paragraph, although quite amusing, is not what you'd really expect in an encyclopedia.
- neither is the word "LOSERS" that's found it's way into the article without context... it looks like someone gave a trained monkey a keyboard again (9_9) 81.132.55.17 23:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC) Elmo
-
- I've taken care of both these problems. If you spot blatant vandalism, like the "LOSERS" edit, it couldn't hurt to revert it. --Hyperbole 00:59, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Prose is writing distinguished from poetry by its greater variety of rhythm and its closer resemblance to the patterns of everyday speech. The word prose comes from the Latin prosa, meaning straightforward, hence the term "prosaic," which is often seen a perjorative. 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. Thus, it may be used for newspapers, capers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcast media, films, letters, debtor's notes, famous quotes, murder mystery, history, philosophy, biography, linguistic geography and many other forms of media along with rants on thoughts. It just depends on the school in which one was taught.
Prose generally lacks the formal structure of meter or rhyme that is often found in poetry. Although some works of prose may happen to contain traces of metrical structure or versification, a conscious blend of the two forms of literature is known as a prose poem. Similarly, poetry with less of the common rules and limitations of verse is known as free verse. Poetry is considered to be artificially developed ("The best words in the best order"), whereas prose is thought to be less constructed and more reflective of ordinary speech. Pierre de Ronsard, the French poet, said that his training as a poet had proved to him that prose and poetry were mortal enemies. In Molière's play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain asks something to be written in neither verse nor prose. A philosophy master says to him, "Sir, there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse". Jourdain replies, "By my faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing anything about it, and I am much obliged to you for having taught me that
