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PROSE
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PROSE , a word supposed to be derived from the See also:Lat. prorsus, See also:direct or straight, and signifying the See also:plain speech of mankind, when written, or rhetorically composed, without reference to the rules of See also:verse. It has been usual to distinguish prose very definitely from See also:poetry (q.v.), and this was an See also:early See also:opinion. See also:Ronsard said that his training as a poet had proved to him that prose and poetry were " mortal enemies." But " poetry " is a more or less metaphysical See also:term, which cannot be used without danger as a distinctive one in this sense. For instance, an See also:ill-inspired See also:work in See also:rhyme, or even a well-written metrical See also:composition of a satirical or didactic See also:kind, cannot be said to be poetry, and yet most certainly is not prose; it is a specimen of verse. On the other See also:hand, a work of highly wrought and elaborately sustained non-metrical See also:writing is often called a prose-poem. The fact that this phrase can be employed shows that the See also:anti-thesis between prose and poetry is not See also:complete, for no one, even in jest or See also:hyperbole, speaks of a prose-verse. Prose, therefore, is most safely defined as comprising all forms of careful See also:literary expression which are not metrically versified, and hence the See also:definition from prorsus, the notion being that all verse is in its nature so far artificial that it is subjected to definite and recognized rules, by which it is diverted out of the perfectly direct modes of speech. Prose, on the other hand, is straight and plain, not an See also:artistic product, but used for stating precisely that which is true in See also:reason or fact. The Latins called prose sermo pedestris, and later oratio soluta, thus showing their consciousness that it was not poetry, which soars on wings, and not verse, which is See also:bound by the rules of prosodical confinement. Prose, however, is not everything that is loosely said. It has its rules and requirements. In the earliest ages, no doubt, conversation did not exist. The rudest fragments of speech were sufficient to indicate the needs of the See also:savage, and these See also:blunt babblings were not prose. Later on some orator, dowered with a native persuasiveness, and desirous of making an effect upon his comrades, would See also:link together some broken sentences, and in his See also:heat produce with them something. more coherent than a See also:chain of ejaculations. So far as this was lucid and dignified, this would be the beginning of prose. It cannot be too often said that prose is the result of conversation, but it must at the same See also:time be insisted upon that conversation itself is not necessarily, nor often, prose. Prose is not the negation of all See also:laws of speech; it rejects merely those laws which depend upon See also:metre. What the laws are upon which it does depend are not easy to enumerate or define. But this much is plain; as prose depends on the linking of successive sentences, the first requirement of it is that these sentences should be so arranged as to ensure lucidity and directness. In prose, that the meaning should be given is the primal See also:necessity. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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