What is author's prose in literature. Prose. The world of prose. History of the emergence and development of prose. Prose genres

Literature can influence a person’s worldview, character and spirituality. Prose works teach the reader to adapt to life in society, raise the morality of society and reveal problems modern world. Romance literature, stories, poems are built on the drama and realism of today, framed with exquisite epithets, metaphorical phrases and colorful allegories. In modern stories and novels one can find reflections on the topic universal human values And life problems. The catalog of our portal contains various genres: historical novels, fairy tales, types of oral folk art(epics, true stories), adventure stories, detective stories and much more. The author puts his soul into each work, tries to reach the mind and heart of the reader, tries to change the usual stereotypes about literature in general.

Dystopia - original genre prose literature, which is a kind of author’s response to the pressure of the new order. As a rule, dystopia becomes popular at the time of a political or civil upheaval, during a war, revolution, rallies and other events that upend the usual life of the people. Here general idea about the world is conveyed through the life of one person. The reader observes a conflict between the individual and the state. Usually, main character tries to break the usual stereotypes and goes against the laws.

Children's literature takes special place among contemporary creators. As a rule, children's works lead the reader into a mysterious Magic world and are enveloped in incredible fabulous events. Often, a simple work for children hides not only the problems of good and evil, but also current issues modern society. In this way, the author tries to prepare future teenagers for harsh reality. In addition to being entertaining, such a book also has an educational function. Writing children's works requires special responsibility, skill and talent.

Esotericism is popular among authors and readers - literature that can change perception real world. The main areas of esotericism are books about methods of fortune telling, numerology, astrology and much more. Fiction remains the most popular among readers. Such works touch on many philosophical issues and open the readers' eyes to various imperfections of the world. Sometimes, modern science fiction is an original selection of entertaining stories that allow you to escape from the everyday hustle and bustle and plunge into the world of the unknown.

PROSE is the antonym of verse and poetry, formally - ordinary speech, not divided into selected commensurate segments - poetry, in terms of emotional and semantic - something mundane, ordinary, mediocre. In fact, the dominant form in the literature of two, and in Western Europe- the last three centuries.

Back in the 19th century. all fiction, including prose, was called poetry. Nowadays only poetic literature is called poetry.

The ancient Greeks believed that poetry uses a special speech, decorated according to the rules set out by its theory - poetics. Verse was one of the elements of this decoration, the difference between the speech of poetry and everyday speech. Ornate speech, but according to different rules - not poetics, but rhetoric - was also distinguished oratory (Russian word“eloquence” literally conveys this feature of it), as well as historiography, geographical descriptions And philosophical works. The ancient novel, as the least “correct”, stood lowest in this hierarchy, was not taken seriously and was not recognized as a special layer of literature - prose. In the Middle Ages religious literature was too separated from secular, strictly artistic, prose in both of them to be perceived as something unified. Medieval entertaining and even edifying works in prose were considered incomparable with poetry as such, which was still poetic. The Greatest Novel Renaissance - “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by Francois Rabelais (1494-1553) - belonged more to grassroots literature associated with folk laughter culture than to official literature. M. Cervantes created his “Don Quixote” (1605, 1615) as a parody novel, but the implementation of the plan turned out to be much more serious and significant. In fact, this is the first prose novel (parodied in it chivalric novels were mainly poetic), which was recognized as a work of high literature and influenced the rise of the Western European novel more than a century later - in the 18th century.

In Russia, untranslated novels appeared late, from 1763. They did not belong to high literature; a serious person had to read odes. In the Pushkin era, foreign novels of the 18th century. young provincial noblewomen like Tatyana Larina were keen on domestic ones, while an even more undemanding public was interested in domestic ones. But sentimentalist N.M. Karamzin in the 1790s. had already introduced prose into high literature - in the neutral and unregulated genre of the story, which, like the novel, was not included in the system of recognized classic genres, but also not burdened, like it, with unprofitable associations. Karamzin's stories became poetry in prose. A.S. Even in 1822, Pushkin wrote in a note about prose: “The question is, whose prose is the best in our literature? - Answer: Karamzin.” Ho added: “This is still not great praise...” On September 1 of the same year, in a letter he advised Prince P.A. Vyazemsky to seriously engage in prose. “They are tending to summer to prose...” - Pushkin noted, anticipating his poems in the sixth chapter of “Eugene Onegin”: “They are tending to summer to harsh prose, / They are driving summer to the naughty rhyme...” Author romantic stories A.A. In letters of 1825, he twice called on Bestuzhev (Marlinsky) to take up the novel, as later N.V. Gogol - move from stories to great work. And although he himself made his debut in prose in print only in 1831, simultaneously with Gogol (“Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”) and, like him, anonymously - “Tales of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin,” thanks primarily to the two of them in the 1830s gg. An epochal turning point has occurred in Russian literature, which has already occurred in the West: from predominantly poetic it becomes predominantly prosaic. This process ended in the early 1840s, when “A Hero of Our Time” (1840) by Lermontov (who had extensive plans in prose) and “ Dead Souls” (1842) Gogol. Nekrasov then “proseized” the style of verse poetry.

Poems regained their leadership for a relatively long period only by turn of XIX-XX centuries (“Silver Age” - in contrast to Pushkin’s “golden”), and then only in modernism. The modernists were opposed by strong realist prose writers: M. Gorky, I.A. Bunin,

A.I. Kuprin, I.S. Shmelev, A.N. Tolstoy and others; for their part, symbolists D.S. Merezhkovsky, Fedor Sologub, V.Ya. Bryusov, Andrei Bely, in addition to poetry, created new prose. True, and in Silver Age(N.S. Gumilev), and much later (I.A. Brodsky) some poets put poetry much higher than prose. However, in the classics of the 19th-20th centuries, both Russian and Western, there are more prose writers than poets. Poems were almost completely squeezed out of drama and epic, even from lyric epic: in the second half of the 20th century. the only Russian poem of the classical level is Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero,” which is predominantly lyrical and began by the author back in 1940. Poems remained mainly for lyricism, and modern lyric poetry by the end of the century, as in the West, had lost a mass, even a wide readership, remained for a few fans. Instead of a theoretically clear division of the types of literature - epic, lyricism, drama - a vague but familiar one was fixed in the language: prose, poetry, drama (although lyrical miniatures in prose, strained poems and completely ridiculous dramas in verse are still being created).

The triumphant victory of prose is natural. Poetic speech is frankly conventional. Already L.N. Tolstoy considered it completely artificial, although he admired the lyrics of Tyutchev and Fet. In a small space intense in thought and feeling lyrical work poems look more natural than in lengthy texts. Verse has a lot of additional means of expression compared to prose, but these “supports” are archaic in origin. In many countries of the West and East modern poetry uses almost exclusively free verse (free verse), which has no meter or rhyme.

Prose has its structural advantages. Much less capable than verse of influencing the reader “musically,” it is more free in the choice of semantic nuances, shades of speech, and in the transmission of “voices.” different people. “Diversity”, according to M.M. Bakhtin, prose is inherent to a greater extent than poetry (see: Artistic speech). The form of prose is similar to other properties of both the content and form of modern literature. “In prose there is unity crystallizing from diversity. In poetry, on the contrary, there is diversity developing from a clearly declared and directly expressed unity.” Ho for modern man unambiguous clarity, “head-on” statements in art are akin to banality. Literature XIX and even more than the 20th century. prefers as a basic principle a complex and dynamic unity, a unity of dynamic diversity. This also applies to poetry. By and large, one pattern determines the unity of femininity and masculinity in the poems of A.A. Akhmatova, tragedy and mockery in the prose of A.P. Platonov’s seemingly completely incompatible plot and content layers - satirical, demonic, “evangelical” and the love connecting them - in “The Master and Margarita” by M.A. Bulgakov, novel and epic in “Quiet Don” by M.A. Sholokhov, the absurdity and touching character of the story by V.M. Shukshin “Weirdo”, etc. Given this complexity of literature, prose reveals its own complexity compared to poetry. That's why Yu.M. Lotman built the following sequence from simple to complex: “ Speaking- song (text + motive) - “classical poetry” - literary prose.” With a developed culture of speech, the “assimilation” of literary language to everyday language is more difficult than the clear, straightforward “dissimilarity” that poetic speech originally was. Thus, it is more difficult for a student to draw to draw a life that is similar than that which is dissimilar. Thus, realism demanded more experience from humanity than pre-realist movements in art.

One should not think that only verse has rhythm. Spoken speech is quite rhythmic, like normal human movements - it is regulated by the rhythm of breathing. Rhythm is the regularity of some repetitions in time. Of course, the rhythm of ordinary prose is not as orderly as that of poetry, it is unstable and unpredictable. There is more rhythmic (in Turgenev) and less rhythmic (in Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy) prose, but it is never completely unordered. Syntactically prominent short sections of text do not differ greatly in length; they often begin or end rhythmically in the same way two or more times in a row. The phrase about the girls at the beginning of Gorky’s “Old Woman Izergil” is noticeably rhythmic: “Their hair, / silky and black, / was loose, / the wind, warm and light, / playing with it, / jingled with the coins / woven into it.” The syntagmas here are short and commensurate. Of the seven syntagmas, the first four and sixth begin with stressed syllables, the first three and sixth end with two unstressed (“dactylic” endings), inside the phrase the same way - with one unstressed syllable - two adjacent syntagmas end: “wind, warm and light” (all three words are rhythmically identical, consist of two syllables and are stressed on the first) and “playing with them” (both words end with one unstressed syllable). The only, last syntagma ends with an accent, which energetically ends the entire phrase.

The writer can also play on rhythmic contrasts. In Bunin’s story “Mr. from San Francisco,” the fourth paragraph (“It was the end of November...”) contains three phrases. The first is small, it consists of the words “but they sailed quite safely.” The next one is huge, half a page, describing the pastime on the famous “Atlantis”. In fact, it consists of many phrases, separated, however, not by a period, but mainly by a semicolon. They're like sea ​​waves, overlap one another continuously. Thus, everything that is discussed is practically equalized: the structure of the ship, the daily routine, the activities of passengers - everything, living and inanimate. The final part of the gigantic phrase is “at seven they announced with trumpet signals what was the main goal of this whole existence, its crown...” Only here does the writer pause, expressed by a sharpening. And finally the last, final phrase, short, but as if equated with the previous one, so information-rich: “And then the gentleman from San Francisco hurried to his rich cabin to get dressed.” This “equation” enhances the subtle irony about the “crown” of this entire existence, that is, of course, dinner, although it is not deliberately named, but only implied. It is no coincidence that Bunin later described in such detail his hero’s preparation for dinner and his dressing in a hotel in Capri: “And then he again began to prepare, as if for a crown...” Even the word “crown” is repeated. After the gong (analogous to the “trumpet signals” on Atlantis), the gentleman goes to the reading room to wait for his not quite ready wife and daughter. There he suffers a blow from which he dies. Instead of the “crown” of existence there is non-existence. So rhythm, rhythm disruptions, and similar rhythmic semantic “roll calls” (with some reservations we can also talk about the rhythm of imagery) contribute to the merging of all elements of the text into a harmonious artistic whole.

Sometimes, since the end of the 18th century, and most of all in the first third of the 20th century, writers even metrize prose: they introduce the same sequence of stresses into syntagmas as in syllabic-tonic verses, but do not divide the text into poetic lines, boundaries between syntagmas remain unpredictable. Andrei Bely tried to make metered prose almost a universal form; he used it not only in novels, but also in articles and memoirs, which greatly irritated many readers. IN modern literature metrized prose is used in some lyrical miniatures and as separate inserts in larger works. When in a continuous text the rhythmic pauses are constant and the metered segments are equal in length, the sound of such a text is indistinguishable from a poetic text, like Gorky’s “Songs about the Falcon and the Petrel.”

We all studied prose at school in literature classes, but who can now answer the question of what prose is? Perhaps you remember that oral or written speech is called prose, but you probably forgot that works in prose are not divided into commensurate segments (in other words, poetry). Unlike poetry, the rhythm of prose works is the relationship of syntactic structures (sentences, periods).

Prose arose during the times ancient literature. Since the 19th century, prose began to lead in literature.

Let us explain what applies to prose. Prose is ordinary speech, simple, unmeasured, without dimensions. However, there is measured prose, similar in sound to ancient Russian songs.

Prose also has forms. So, journalistic, business, scientific, religious-preaching, memoir-confessional forms initially developed.

Stories, novellas and novels belong to artistic prose and differ from the lyrics in their emotional restraint, intellectuality, and philosophical principles.

From the definition at the beginning of the article it is easy to understand that prose is the opposite of poetry. But then what is a prose poem? This text is very complex, but without rhyme, almost always romantic content. I. S. Turgenev wrote many prose poems.

Prose genres

Traditionally, the literary genres related to prose include:

• Novel. A novel is a narrative work that is large in volume and has a complex, developed plot.
• Tale. This is a kind of epic poetry, similar to a novel, which tells about some episode from life. The story, to a lesser extent than the novel, talks about the life and character of the heroes; it is shorter and more restrained.
• Novella. A short story is called a short story narrative genre. It is comparable in length to a short story, but distinctive feature is the presence of genesis, history and structure.
• Epic. Epic work, monumental in form, touching on national issues.
• Story. Is a small form fiction. The volume of text is small, since the story does not cover a large period of time and describes a specific event in a specific time period.
• Essay. This is a prose composition on any topic. The volume is small, the composition is not strictly designated. In an essay, the author expresses his individual impression and opinion on a specific issue.
• Biography is a well-known form of presenting the history of a person’s life and activity.

Prose(lat. prōsa) - oral or written language without division into commensurate segments - poetry; in contrast to poetry, its rhythm is based on the approximate correlation of syntactic structures (periods, sentences).

So what is this - prose

It would seem that this is such a simple concept that everyone knows. But this is precisely where the difficulty of describing it lies. It’s easier to define what poetry is. Poetic speech is subject to strict laws and rules.

1. It is a clear rhythm or meter. Like in a march: one - two, one - two, or like in a dance: one - two - three, one - two - three.
2. Although an optional condition: Rhyme, that is, words that are consonant in their pronunciation. For example, love is a carrot or prose is a rose, etc.
3. A certain number of stanzas. Two stanzas are a couplet, four are a quatrain, there are eight stanzas, as well as various combinations of them.

All other written or spoken speech that does not obey these laws is prose. In it the words flow like deep river, smoothly, freely and independently, obeying only the thoughts and imagination of the author. Prose is a description in simple accessible language of everything that is around.

There is such a thing as the prose of life. These are everyday, mundane events that happen in people's lives. Writers who describe these events in their works. Writers are called prose writers. You don't have to look far for examples.

All world classic literature, and not only classical. F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy. M. Gorky, N.V. Gogol are great prose writers. Open any of their books, and you will immediately understand what prose is, if you didn’t already know it.

But there are still people in the wide, vast expanses of our Motherland who seriously believe that prose writers are the kind of people who write about ZAEK. Some consider them illiterate and uneducated, while others, on the contrary, consider them original and creative. The choice is yours.

So what is prose? Look carefully, here is an example of a simple prose work. This article. And if someone still doesn’t understand what prose is, then read it again.

Prose is all around us. She is in life and in books. Prose is our everyday language.

Literary prose is a non-rhyming narrative that has no meter (a special form of organization of spoken speech).

A prose work is one written without rhyme, which is its main difference from poetry. Prose works can be both fiction and non-fiction, sometimes they are intertwined, as, for example, in biographies or memoirs.

How did prose, or epic, work arise?

Prose came to the world of literature from Ancient Greece. It was there that poetry first appeared, and then prose as a term. The first prose works were myths, traditions, legends, and fairy tales. These genres were defined by the Greeks as non-artistic, mundane. These were religious, everyday or historical narratives, defined as “prosaic”.

In the first place was highly artistic poetry, prose was in second place, as a kind of opposition. The situation began to change only in the second half. Prose genres began to develop and expand. Novels, stories and short stories appeared.

In the 19th century, the prose writer pushed the poet into the background. The novel and short story became the main ones artistic forms in literature. Finally, prose work took its rightful place.

Prose is classified by size: small and large. Let's look at the main artistic genres.

Large prose work: types

A novel is a prose work that is distinguished by the length of the narrative and a complex plot, fully developed in the work, and a novel can also have side plot lines in addition to the main one.

Novelists included Honoré de Balzac, Daniel Defoe, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, Erich Maria Remarque and many others.

Examples of prose works by Russian novelists could form a separate book-list. These are works that have become classics. For example, such as “Crime and Punishment” and “The Idiot” by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, “The Gift” and “Lolita” by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, “Doctor Zhivago” by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, “Fathers and Sons” by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, “Hero of Our Time” Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov and so on.

An epic is larger in volume than a novel, and describes major historical events or responds to national issues, more often than not, both.

The most significant and famous epics in Russian literature are “War and Peace” by Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, “ Quiet Don"Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov and "Peter the First" by Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

Small prose work: types

Novella - short work, comparable to a story, but more eventful. The story of the novella originates in oral folklore, in parables and legends.

The novelists were Edgar Allan Poe, Herbert Wells; Guy de Maupassant and Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin also wrote short stories.

A story is a short prose work characterized by a small number of characters, one storyline and detailed description details.

Rich in stories by Bunin and Paustovsky.

An essay is a prose work that can easily be confused with a story. But there are still significant differences: the description is only real events, absence of fiction, a combination of fiction and non-fiction literature, as a rule, touching social problems and the presence of greater descriptiveness than in the story.

Essays can be portrait and historical, problematic and travel. They can also mix with each other. For example, historical essay may also contain portrait or problem.

An essay is some impressions or reasoning of the author in connection with a specific topic. It has a free composition. This type of prose combines the functions literary essay and a journalistic article. May also have something in common with a philosophical treatise.

Average prose genre - story

The story is on the border between a short story and a novel. In terms of volume, it cannot be classified as either a small or a large prose work.

In Western literature the story is called " short novel" Unlike a novel, in a story there is always one story line, but it also develops fully and fully, so it cannot be classified as a short story.

There are many examples of stories in Russian literature. Here are just a few: " Poor Lisa" Karamzin, "The Steppe" by Chekhov, "Netochka Nezvanova" by Dostoevsky, "District" by Zamyatin, "The Life of Arsenyev" by Bunin, " Stationmaster» Pushkin.

IN foreign literature One can name, for example, “René” by Chateaubriand, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” by Conan Doyle, “The Tale of Monsieur Sommer” by Suskind.