Prose
Definition
Prose is a form of language that has no formal metrical structure. It applies a natural flow of speech, and ordinary grammatical structure rather than rhythmic structure, such as in the case of traditional poetry.Types of Prose
1. Nonfictional Prose : A literary work that is mainly based on fact although it may contain fictional elements in certain cases. Examples are biographies and essays.2. Fictional Prose : A literary work that is wholly or partly imagined or theoretical. Examples are novels.
3. Heroic Prose : A literary work that may be written down or recited and employs many of the formulaic expressions found in oral tradition. Examples are legends and tales.
4. Prose Poetry : A literary work which exhibits poetic quality using emotional effects and heightened imagery but are written in prose instead of verse.
Functions of Prose
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 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 discoursed. It is also the common language used in newspapers, magazines, literature, encyclopedias, broadcasting, philosophy, law, history, the sciences and many other forms of communication.Later Middle English prose
The continuity of a
tradition in English prose writing, linking the later with the early
Middle English period, is somewhat clearer than that detected in verse.
The Ancrene Wisse,
for example, continued to be copied and adapted to suit changing tastes
and circumstances. But sudden and brilliant imaginative phenomena like
the writings of Chaucer, Langland, and the author of Sir Gawayne
are not to be found in prose. Instead came steady growth in the
composition of religious prose of various kinds and the first appearance
of secular prose in any quantity.
Religious prose
Of
the first importance was the development of a sober, analytical, but
nonetheless impressive kind of contemplative or mystical prose,
represented by Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and the anonymous Cloud of Unknowing.
The authors of these pieces certainly knew the more rugged and fervent
writings of their earlier, 14th-century predecessor Richard Rolle, and
to some extent they reacted against what they saw as excesses in the
style and content of his work. It is of particular interest to note that
the mystical tradition was continued into the 15th century, though in
very different ways, by two women writers, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.
Julian, often regarded as the first English woman of letters, underwent
a series of mystical experiences in 1373 about which she wrote in her Sixteen Revelations of Divine Love,
one of the foremost works of English spirituality by the standards of
any age. Rather different religious experiences went into the making of The Book of Margery Kempe (c.
1432–36), the extraordinary autobiographical record of a bourgeoise
woman, dictated to two clerks. The nature and status of its spiritual
content remain controversial, but its often engaging colloquial style
and vivid realization of the medieval scene are of abiding interest.
Another important
branch of the contemplative movement in prose involved the translation
of Continental Latin texts. A major example, and one of the best-loved
of all medieval English books in its time, is The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (c. 1410), Nicholas Love’s translation of the Meditationes vitae Christi, attributed to St. Bonaventure. Love’s work was particularly valued by the church as an orthodox counterbalance to the heretical tendencies of the Lollards, who espoused the teachings of John Wycliffe
and his circle. The Lollard movement generated a good deal of
stylistically distinctive prose writing, though as the Lollards soon
came under threat of death by burning, nearly all of it remains
anonymous. A number of English works have been attributed to Wycliffe
himself, and the first English translation of the Bible to Wycliffe’s disciple John Purvey, but there are no firm grounds for these attributions. The Lollard Bible,
which exists in a crude early form and in a more impressive later
version (supposedly Purvey’s work), was widely read in spite of being
under doctrinal suspicion. It later influenced William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, completed in 1525, and, through Tyndale, the King James Version (1611)
Secular prose
Secular
compositions and translations in prose also came into prominence in the
last quarter of the 14th century, though their stylistic accomplishment
does not always match that of the religious tradition. Chaucer’s “
Tale of Melibeus” and his two astronomical translations, the Treatise on the Astrolabe and the Equatorie of the Planets, were relatively modest endeavours beside the massive efforts of John of Trevisa, who translated from Latin both Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon (c. 1385–87), a universal history, and Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum (1398; “On the Properties of Things”), an encyclopaedia. Judging by the number of surviving manuscripts, however, the most widely read secular prose work of the period is likely to have been The Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, the supposed adventures of Sir John Mandeville, knight of St. Albans, on his journeys through Asia. Though the work now is believed to be purely fictional, its exotic allure and the occasionally arch style of its author were popular with the English reading public down to the 18th century.
