Brief prose. What is a prose work

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, which were 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 have become the main artistic forms in literature. Finally, the 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” by Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov and “Peter the Great” by Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

Small prose work: types

A short story is a short work, comparable to a short 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 plot line and a detailed description of 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: a description of only real events, the absence of fiction, a combination of fiction and non-fiction literature, as a rule, touching on social problems and the presence of greater descriptiveness than in a story.

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

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 of a 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 a “short novel.” Unlike a novel, a story always has one plot 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 Liza” by Karamzin, “The Steppe” by Chekhov, “Netochka Nezvanova” by Dostoevsky, “District” by Zamyatin, “The Life of Arsenyev” by Bunin, “The Station Agent” by Pushkin.

In foreign literature one can name, for example, “René” by Chateaubriand, “The Hound of the Baskervilles” by Conan Doyle, “The Tale of Mr. Sommer” by Suskind.

Popular books and bestsellers often become novels, but not collections of stories, and meanwhile the skill of a writer is much more obvious in the format of short prose. Hemingway once emphasized the fundamental importance of finding the “right word”, which in a good writer contains what a bad writer would write down on two pages. What makes short prose all the more enjoyable is that you can read the whole work: from beginning to end, during a trip or in one weekend. Short prose is not for all authors; we offer a list of the best modern short story authors and their best collections, translated into Russian.

Would you be so kind as to remain silent?

Raymond Carver

Carver is perhaps the most succinct of the authors on this list. He wrote the stories in this collection, which was shortlisted for the American National Book prize, in his “first life,” in which he almost died of alcoholism. His “second life” began in 1977 thanks to the support of the Association of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Tenth of December

George Saunders

George Saunders is the creator of laugh bombs, which he carefully hides between the deep thoughts of his philosophical stories full of imagination and action. He is a master at combining humor and humanity with brilliant writing technique.

Fugitive

Alice Munro

The Canadian writer, hailed as a “master of modern short fiction,” won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime contribution to literature and has been called “the Chekhov of our time.” "Runaway" is one of her best collections.

The Garden Party and Other Stories

Katherine Mansfield

This collection was published in 1922, a year before Katherine Mansfield died at the age of 34. A pioneer of modernism, Mansfield was born and raised in colonial New Zealand and eventually moved to Britain, where she became friends with D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. The collection's title story uses the family's routine preparations for tea in the garden as a backdrop, but offers deep and poignant reflections on social status, life and death, illusion and reality.

Pulse

Julian Barnes

Barnes is better known as a novelist, having won the Man Booker prize in 2011 for The Sense of an Ending, and as a result his stories receive less attention than they surely deserve. If you're looking for a master class in short fiction, look no further than Barnes's book. His original and attentive view of social nuances gives the reader unconventional plots and believable characters.

Selected stories

Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore is one of the best observers of human behavior. Sharp humor is the author's hallmark, however, the main feature of her skill is the ability to move on to poignant, taboo topics: fatal diseases, betrayal and family tragedies.

Home truth

Mavis Gallant

Not much has been translated into Russian from this author, but the search (or the effort to read the original) is certainly worth it: Gallant is one of the best writers of the short prose genre. In total, she wrote a dozen collections of stories. With smart prose and beautiful dialogue, Home Truth is a tale of Canadian identity.

steps

Jerzy Kosinski

Critics say the stories in this collection reflect the dark side of humanity. These are miniature allegories told with exceptional elegance.

Kiss

Roald Dahl

Labyrinths

Jorge Luis Borges

This book was written by the author during World War II and includes many of Borges's best works, such as "The Library of Babel", a story that inspired many other famous authors like Umberto Eco and Terry Pratchett to write variations on the theme.

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 of 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, novels and novels belong to artistic prose and differ from 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 with 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 a short literary narrative genre. In terms of volume, it is comparable to a short story, but its distinctive feature is the presence of genesis, history and structure.
• Epic. An epic work, monumental in form, touching on national issues.
• Story. It is a small form of 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.