This type of written text is different from poetry in that it has complete sentences organized into paragraphs. Unlike poetry, prose focuses on characters and plot, rather than focusing on sounds. It includes short stories and novels, while fiction and non-fiction are its sub genres. Prose is further categorized into essays, speeches, sermons, and interpretations.
Prose is the most common form of writing. It is not restricted by rhythm or dialogue, and it most closely resembles everyday speech. It is usually straightforward, and may utilize figurative language, dialogue, characters, and imagery.
Prose writing is often divided into two primary categories:
Prose is the most common form of writing. It is not restricted by rhythm or dialogue, and it most closely resembles everyday speech. It is usually straightforward, and may utilize figurative language, dialogue, characters, and imagery.
Prose writing is often divided into two primary categories:
Fiction
Fiction is narrative writing that originates from the author’s imagination. It is designed to entertain, but it can also inspire, inform, or persuade.
Primary Sub-Genres of Fiction
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Nonfiction
Nonfiction is writing that is based on true events, people, places, and facts. It is designed to inform, and sometimes to entertain.
Primary Sub-Genres of Nonfiction
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Prose: Sub-genres of Fiction
Novel
Novel, an invented prose narrative of considerable length and a certain complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience, usually through a connected sequence of events involving a group of persons in a specific setting. Within its broad framework, the genre of the novel has encompassed an extensive range of types and styles: picaresque, epistolary, Gothic, romantic, realist, historical—to name only some of the more important ones.
The novel is a genre of fiction, and fiction may be defined as the art or craft of contriving, through the written word, representations of human life that instruct or divert or both. The various forms that fiction may take are best seen less as a number of separate categories than as a continuum or, more accurately, a cline, with some such brief form as the anecdote at one end of the scale and the longest conceivable novel at the other. When any piece of fiction is long enough to constitute a whole book, as opposed to a mere part of a book, then it may be said to have achieved novelhood. But this state admits of its own quantitative categories, so that a relatively brief novel may be termed a novella (or, if the insubstantiality of the content matches its brevity, a novelette), and a very long novel may overflow the banks of a single volume and become a roman-fleuve, or river novel. Length is very much one of the dimensions of the genre.
The term novel is a truncation of the Italian word novella (from the plural of Latin novellus, a late variant of novus, meaning “new”), so that what is now, in most languages, a diminutive denotes historically the parent form.It is to be noted that, despite the high example of novelists of the most profound seriousness, such as Tolstoy, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, the term novel still, in some quarters, carries overtones of lightness and frivolity.
The novel is a genre of fiction, and fiction may be defined as the art or craft of contriving, through the written word, representations of human life that instruct or divert or both. The various forms that fiction may take are best seen less as a number of separate categories than as a continuum or, more accurately, a cline, with some such brief form as the anecdote at one end of the scale and the longest conceivable novel at the other. When any piece of fiction is long enough to constitute a whole book, as opposed to a mere part of a book, then it may be said to have achieved novelhood. But this state admits of its own quantitative categories, so that a relatively brief novel may be termed a novella (or, if the insubstantiality of the content matches its brevity, a novelette), and a very long novel may overflow the banks of a single volume and become a roman-fleuve, or river novel. Length is very much one of the dimensions of the genre.
The term novel is a truncation of the Italian word novella (from the plural of Latin novellus, a late variant of novus, meaning “new”), so that what is now, in most languages, a diminutive denotes historically the parent form.It is to be noted that, despite the high example of novelists of the most profound seriousness, such as Tolstoy, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf, the term novel still, in some quarters, carries overtones of lightness and frivolity.
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Novella
Novella, short and well-structured narrative, often realistic and satiric in tone, that influenced the development of the short story and the novel throughout Europe. Originating in Italy during the Middle Ages, the novella was based on local events that were humorous, political, or amorous in nature; the individual tales often were gathered into collections along with anecdotes, legends, and romantic tales. Writers such as Giovanni Boccaccio, Franco Sacchetti, and Matteo Bandello later developed the novella into a psychologically subtle and highly structured short tale, often using a frame story to unify the tales around a common theme.
Geoffrey Chaucer introduced the novella to England with The Canterbury Tales. During the Elizabethan period, William Shakespeare and other playwrights extracted dramatic plots from the Italian novella. The realistic content and form of these tales influenced the development of the English novel in the 18th century and the short story in the 19th century.The novella flourished in Germany, where it is known as the Novelle, in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries in the works of writers such as Heinrich von Kleist, Gerhart Hauptmann, J.W. von Goethe, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka.The Novelle also survived as a unique form, although unity of mood and style often replaced the traditional unity of action; the importance of the frame was diminished, as was the necessity for maintaining absolute objectivity.Examples of works considered to be novellas, rather than novels or short stories, are Leo Tolstoy’s Smert Ivana Ilicha (The Death of Ivan Ilich), Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Zapiski iz podpolya (Notes from the Underground), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Henry James’s “The Aspern Papers.”
Geoffrey Chaucer introduced the novella to England with The Canterbury Tales. During the Elizabethan period, William Shakespeare and other playwrights extracted dramatic plots from the Italian novella. The realistic content and form of these tales influenced the development of the English novel in the 18th century and the short story in the 19th century.The novella flourished in Germany, where it is known as the Novelle, in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries in the works of writers such as Heinrich von Kleist, Gerhart Hauptmann, J.W. von Goethe, Thomas Mann, and Franz Kafka.The Novelle also survived as a unique form, although unity of mood and style often replaced the traditional unity of action; the importance of the frame was diminished, as was the necessity for maintaining absolute objectivity.Examples of works considered to be novellas, rather than novels or short stories, are Leo Tolstoy’s Smert Ivana Ilicha (The Death of Ivan Ilich), Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Zapiski iz podpolya (Notes from the Underground), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Henry James’s “The Aspern Papers.”
Short story
Short story, brief fictional prose narrative that is shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters.
The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a “complete” or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.
Before the 19th century the short story was not generally regarded as a distinct literary form. But although in this sense it may seem to be a uniquely modern genre, the fact is that short prose fiction is nearly as old as language itself. Throughout history humankind has enjoyed various types of brief narratives: jests, anecdotes, studied digressions, short allegorical romances, moralizing fairy tales, short myths, and abbreviated historical legends. None of these constitutes a short story as it has been defined since the 19th century, but they do make up a large part of the milieu from which the modern short story emerged.
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The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a “complete” or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.
Before the 19th century the short story was not generally regarded as a distinct literary form. But although in this sense it may seem to be a uniquely modern genre, the fact is that short prose fiction is nearly as old as language itself. Throughout history humankind has enjoyed various types of brief narratives: jests, anecdotes, studied digressions, short allegorical romances, moralizing fairy tales, short myths, and abbreviated historical legends. None of these constitutes a short story as it has been defined since the 19th century, but they do make up a large part of the milieu from which the modern short story emerged.
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Myths and Legends
Legend, traditional story or group of stories told about a particular person or place. Formerly the term legend meant a tale about a saint. Legends resemble folktales in content; they may include supernatural beings, elements of mythology, or explanations of natural phenomena, but they are associated with a particular locality or person and are told as a matter of history.Some legends are the unique property of the place or person that they depict, such as the story of young George Washington, the future first president of the United States, who confesses to chopping down the cherry tree. But many local legends are actually well-known folktales that have become attached to some particular person or place. For example, a widely distributed folktale of an excellent marksman who is forced to shoot an apple, hazelnut, or some other object from his son’s head has become associated with the Swiss hero William Tell. Another popular tale, of a younger son whose only inheritance is a cat, which he sells for a fortune in a land overrun with mice, has become associated with Richard Whittington, thrice lord mayor of London in the early 15th century. The story told about King Lear is essentially the folktale “Love Like Salt.”
Local legends sometimes travel. Though the Pied Piper of Hamelin is famous through literary treatment, many other European towns have a similar legend of a piper who lured their children away.
Myth is a legendary or a traditional story that usually concerns an event or a hero, with or without using factual or real explanations. These particularly concern demigods or deities, and describes some rites, practices, and natural phenomenon. Typically, a myth involves historical events and supernatural beings. There are many types of myths, such as classic myths, religious myths, and modern myths.
Myth usually features ruling gods, goddesses, deities, and heroes having god-like-qualities, but status lower than gods. Often, the daughter or son of a god (such as Percy Jackson) is fully mortal, and these characters have supernatural abilities and powers that raise them above average human beings.
Myths are mostly very old, and happen to have ruled the world when science, philosophy, and technology were not very precise, as they are today. Therefore, people were unaware of certain questions, like why the sky is blue, or why night is dark, or what are the causes of earthquakes. Thus, it was myths that explained natural phenomena, and described rituals and ceremonies to the people.
Local legends sometimes travel. Though the Pied Piper of Hamelin is famous through literary treatment, many other European towns have a similar legend of a piper who lured their children away.
Myth is a legendary or a traditional story that usually concerns an event or a hero, with or without using factual or real explanations. These particularly concern demigods or deities, and describes some rites, practices, and natural phenomenon. Typically, a myth involves historical events and supernatural beings. There are many types of myths, such as classic myths, religious myths, and modern myths.
Myth usually features ruling gods, goddesses, deities, and heroes having god-like-qualities, but status lower than gods. Often, the daughter or son of a god (such as Percy Jackson) is fully mortal, and these characters have supernatural abilities and powers that raise them above average human beings.
Myths are mostly very old, and happen to have ruled the world when science, philosophy, and technology were not very precise, as they are today. Therefore, people were unaware of certain questions, like why the sky is blue, or why night is dark, or what are the causes of earthquakes. Thus, it was myths that explained natural phenomena, and described rituals and ceremonies to the people.
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Fables
Fable, narrative form, usually featuring animals that behave and speak as human beings, told in order to highlight human follies and weaknesses. A moral—or lesson for behaviour—is woven into the story and often explicitly formulated at the end.The Western tradition of fable effectively begins with Aesop, a likely legendary figure to whom is attributed a collection of ancient Greek fables. Modern editions contain up to 200 fables, but there is no way of tracing their actual origins; the earliest known collection linked to Aesop dates to the 4th century bce. Among the Classical authors who developed the Aesopian model were the Roman poet Horace, the Greek biographer Plutarch, and the Greek satirist Lucian.Fable flourished in the Middle Ages, as did all forms of allegory, and a notable collection of fables was made in the late 12th century by Marie de France.
The fable has traditionally been of modest length, however, and the form reached its zenith in 17th-century France in the work of Jean de La Fontaine, whose theme was the folly of human vanity. His first collection of Fables in 1668 followed the Aesopian pattern, but his later ones, accumulated during the next 25 years, satirized the court and its bureaucrats, the church, the rising bourgeoisie—indeed, the whole human scene. His influence was felt throughout Europe, and in the Romantic period his outstanding successor was the Russian Ivan Andreyevich Krylov.
The fable found a new audience during the 19th century with the rise of children’s literature. Among the celebrated authors who employed the form were Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, Hilaire Belloc, Joel Chandler Harris, and Beatrix Potter. Though not writing primarily for children, Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, J.R.R. Tolkien, and James Thurber also used the form.
The fable has traditionally been of modest length, however, and the form reached its zenith in 17th-century France in the work of Jean de La Fontaine, whose theme was the folly of human vanity. His first collection of Fables in 1668 followed the Aesopian pattern, but his later ones, accumulated during the next 25 years, satirized the court and its bureaucrats, the church, the rising bourgeoisie—indeed, the whole human scene. His influence was felt throughout Europe, and in the Romantic period his outstanding successor was the Russian Ivan Andreyevich Krylov.
The fable found a new audience during the 19th century with the rise of children’s literature. Among the celebrated authors who employed the form were Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, Hilaire Belloc, Joel Chandler Harris, and Beatrix Potter. Though not writing primarily for children, Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, J.R.R. Tolkien, and James Thurber also used the form.
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Autobiography
Autobiography, the biography of oneself narrated by oneself. Autobiographical works can take many forms, from the intimate writings made during life that were not necessarily intended for publication (including letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and reminiscences) to a formal book-length autobiography.Formal autobiographies offer a special kind of biographical truth: a life, reshaped by recollection, with all of recollection’s conscious and unconscious omissions and distortions. The novelist Graham Greene said that, for this reason, an autobiography is only “a sort of life” and used the phrase as the title for his own autobiography (1971).
Types of autobiography
An autobiography may be placed into one of four very broad types: thematic, religious, intellectual, and fictionalized. The first grouping includes books with such diverse purposes as The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920) and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925, 1927). Religious autobiography claims a number of great works, ranging from Augustine and Kempe to the autobiographical chapters of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Apologia in the 19th century. That century and the early 20th saw the creation of several intellectual autobiographies, including the severely analytical Autobiography of the philosopher John Stuart Mill and The Education of Henry Adams. Finally, somewhat analogous to the novel as biography is the autobiography thinly disguised as, or transformed into, the novel. This group includes such works as Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh (1903), James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), George Santayana’s The Last Puritan (1935), and the novels of Thomas Wolfe. Yet in all of these works can be detected elements of all four types; the most outstanding autobiographies often ride roughshod over these distinctions.
Types of autobiography
An autobiography may be placed into one of four very broad types: thematic, religious, intellectual, and fictionalized. The first grouping includes books with such diverse purposes as The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920) and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925, 1927). Religious autobiography claims a number of great works, ranging from Augustine and Kempe to the autobiographical chapters of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Apologia in the 19th century. That century and the early 20th saw the creation of several intellectual autobiographies, including the severely analytical Autobiography of the philosopher John Stuart Mill and The Education of Henry Adams. Finally, somewhat analogous to the novel as biography is the autobiography thinly disguised as, or transformed into, the novel. This group includes such works as Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh (1903), James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), George Santayana’s The Last Puritan (1935), and the novels of Thomas Wolfe. Yet in all of these works can be detected elements of all four types; the most outstanding autobiographies often ride roughshod over these distinctions.
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Biography
Biography, form of literature, commonly considered nonfictional, the subject of which is the life of an individual. One of the oldest forms of literary expression, it seeks to re-create in words the life of a human being—as understood from the historical or personal perspective of the author—by drawing upon all available evidence, including that retained in memory as well as written, oral, and pictorial material.
Biography is sometimes regarded as a branch of history, and earlier biographical writings—such as the 15th-century Mémoires of the French councellor of state, Philippe de Commynes, or George Cavendish’s 16th-century life of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey—have often been treated as historical material rather than as literary works in their own right. Some entries in ancient Chinese chronicles included biographical sketches; imbedded in the Roman historian Tacitus’s Annals is the most famous biography of the emperor Tiberius; conversely, Sir Winston Churchill’s magnificent life of his ancestor John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, can be read as a history (written from a special point of view) of Britain and much of Europe during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).
A biographer in pursuit of an individual long dead is usually hampered by a lack of sources: it is often impossible to check or verify what written evidence there is; there are no witnesses to cross-examine. No method has yet been developed by which to overcome such problems. Each life, however, presents its own opportunities as well as specific difficulties to the biographer: the ingenuity with which the biographer handles gaps in the record—by providing information, for example, about the age that casts light upon the subject—has much to do with the quality of the resulting work.
The biographer writing the life of a person recently dead is often faced with the opposite problem: an abundance of living witnesses and a plethora of materials, which include the subject’s papers and letters, sometimes transcriptions of telephone conversations and conferences, as well as the record of interviews granted to the biographer by the subject’s friends and associates.
Biographers of the 20th century have had at their disposal the psychological theories and practice of Sigmund Freud and of his followers and rivals. The extent to which these new biographical tools for the unlocking of personality have been employed and the results of their use have varied greatly. On the one hand, some biographers have deployed upon their pages the apparatus of psychological revelation—analysis of behaviour symbols, interpretation based on the Oedipus complex, detection of Jungian archetypal patterns of behaviour, and the like.
Biography, while related to history in its search for facts and its responsibility to truth, is truly a branch of literature because it seeks to elicit from facts, by selection and design, the illusion of a life actually being lived. Within the bounds of given data, the biographer seeks to transform plain information into illumination. If he invents or suppresses material in order to create an effect, he fails truth; if he is content to recount facts, he fails art. This tension, between the requirements of authenticity and the necessity for an imaginative ordering of materials to achieve lifelikeness, is perhaps best exemplified in the biographical problem of time.
Biographies are difficult to classify. It is easily recognizable that there are many kinds of lifewriting, but one kind can easily shade into another; no standard basis for classification has yet been developed. A fundamental division offers, however, a useful preliminary view: biographies written from personal knowledge of the subject and those written from research.
Biography is sometimes regarded as a branch of history, and earlier biographical writings—such as the 15th-century Mémoires of the French councellor of state, Philippe de Commynes, or George Cavendish’s 16th-century life of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey—have often been treated as historical material rather than as literary works in their own right. Some entries in ancient Chinese chronicles included biographical sketches; imbedded in the Roman historian Tacitus’s Annals is the most famous biography of the emperor Tiberius; conversely, Sir Winston Churchill’s magnificent life of his ancestor John Churchill, first duke of Marlborough, can be read as a history (written from a special point of view) of Britain and much of Europe during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).
A biographer in pursuit of an individual long dead is usually hampered by a lack of sources: it is often impossible to check or verify what written evidence there is; there are no witnesses to cross-examine. No method has yet been developed by which to overcome such problems. Each life, however, presents its own opportunities as well as specific difficulties to the biographer: the ingenuity with which the biographer handles gaps in the record—by providing information, for example, about the age that casts light upon the subject—has much to do with the quality of the resulting work.
The biographer writing the life of a person recently dead is often faced with the opposite problem: an abundance of living witnesses and a plethora of materials, which include the subject’s papers and letters, sometimes transcriptions of telephone conversations and conferences, as well as the record of interviews granted to the biographer by the subject’s friends and associates.
Biographers of the 20th century have had at their disposal the psychological theories and practice of Sigmund Freud and of his followers and rivals. The extent to which these new biographical tools for the unlocking of personality have been employed and the results of their use have varied greatly. On the one hand, some biographers have deployed upon their pages the apparatus of psychological revelation—analysis of behaviour symbols, interpretation based on the Oedipus complex, detection of Jungian archetypal patterns of behaviour, and the like.
Biography, while related to history in its search for facts and its responsibility to truth, is truly a branch of literature because it seeks to elicit from facts, by selection and design, the illusion of a life actually being lived. Within the bounds of given data, the biographer seeks to transform plain information into illumination. If he invents or suppresses material in order to create an effect, he fails truth; if he is content to recount facts, he fails art. This tension, between the requirements of authenticity and the necessity for an imaginative ordering of materials to achieve lifelikeness, is perhaps best exemplified in the biographical problem of time.
Biographies are difficult to classify. It is easily recognizable that there are many kinds of lifewriting, but one kind can easily shade into another; no standard basis for classification has yet been developed. A fundamental division offers, however, a useful preliminary view: biographies written from personal knowledge of the subject and those written from research.
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Essay
Essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view.Some early treatises—such as those of Cicero on the pleasantness of old age or on the art of “divination,” Seneca on anger or clemency, and Plutarch on the passing of oracles—presage to a certain degree the form and tone of the essay, but not until the late 16th century was the flexible and deliberately nonchalant and versatile form of the essay perfected by the French writer Michel de Montaigne. Choosing the name essai to emphasize that his compositions were attempts or endeavours, a groping toward the expression of his personal thoughts and experiences, Montaigne used the essay as a means of self-discovery. His Essais, published in their final form in 1588, are still considered among the finest of their kind. Later writers who most nearly recall the charm of Montaigne include, in England, Robert Burton, though his whimsicality is more erudite, Sir Thomas Browne, and Laurence Sterne, and in France, with more self-consciousness and pose, André Gide and Jean Cocteau.
At the beginning of the 17th century, social manners, the cultivation of politeness, and the training of an accomplished gentleman became the theme of many essayists. This theme was first exploited by the Italian Baldassare Castiglione in his Il libro del cortegiano (1528; The Book of the Courtier). The influence of the essay and of genres allied to it, such as maxims, portraits, and sketches, proved second to none in molding the behavior of the cultured classes, first in Italy, then in France, and, through French influence, in most of Europe in the 17th century. Among those who pursued this theme was the 17th-century Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián in his essays on the art of worldly wisdom.
The genre also became the favoured tool of traditionalists of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who looked to the short, provocative essay as the most potent means of educating the masses. Essays such as Paul Elmer More’s long series of Shelburne Essays (published between 1904 and 1935), T.S. Eliot’s After Strange Gods (1934) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), and others that attempted to reinterpret and redefine culture, established the genre as the most fitting to express the genteel tradition at odds with the democracy of the new world.Whereas in several countries the essay became the chosen vehicle of literary and social criticism, in other countries the genre became semipolitical, earnestly nationalistic, and often polemical, playful, or bitter. Essayists such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Willa Cather wrote with grace on several lighter subjects, and many writers—including Virginia Woolf, Edmund Wilson, and Charles du Bos—mastered the essay as a form of literary criticism.
At the beginning of the 17th century, social manners, the cultivation of politeness, and the training of an accomplished gentleman became the theme of many essayists. This theme was first exploited by the Italian Baldassare Castiglione in his Il libro del cortegiano (1528; The Book of the Courtier). The influence of the essay and of genres allied to it, such as maxims, portraits, and sketches, proved second to none in molding the behavior of the cultured classes, first in Italy, then in France, and, through French influence, in most of Europe in the 17th century. Among those who pursued this theme was the 17th-century Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián in his essays on the art of worldly wisdom.
The genre also became the favoured tool of traditionalists of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Edmund Burke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who looked to the short, provocative essay as the most potent means of educating the masses. Essays such as Paul Elmer More’s long series of Shelburne Essays (published between 1904 and 1935), T.S. Eliot’s After Strange Gods (1934) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), and others that attempted to reinterpret and redefine culture, established the genre as the most fitting to express the genteel tradition at odds with the democracy of the new world.Whereas in several countries the essay became the chosen vehicle of literary and social criticism, in other countries the genre became semipolitical, earnestly nationalistic, and often polemical, playful, or bitter. Essayists such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Willa Cather wrote with grace on several lighter subjects, and many writers—including Virginia Woolf, Edmund Wilson, and Charles du Bos—mastered the essay as a form of literary criticism.
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Diaries and Journals
Diary, form of autobiographical writing, a regularly kept record of the diarist’s activities and reflections. Written primarily for the writer’s use alone, the diary has a frankness that is unlike writing done for publication. Its ancient lineage is indicated by the existence of the term in Latin, diarium, itself derived from dies (“day”).
The diary form began to flower in the late Renaissance, when the importance of the individual began to be stressed. In addition to their revelation of the diarist’s personality, diaries have been of immense importance for the recording of social and political history. Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, kept by an anonymous French priest from 1409 to 1431 and continued by another hand to 1449, for example, is invaluable to the historian of the reigns of Charles VI and Charles VII. The same kind of attention to historical events characterizes Memorials of the English Affairs by the lawyer and parliamentarian Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605–75) and the diary of the French Marquis de Dangeau (1638–1720), which spans the years 1684 to his death. The English diarist John Evelyn is surpassed only by the greatest diarist of all, Samuel Pepys, whose diary from January 1, 1660 to May 31, 1669, gives both an astonishingly frank picture of his foibles and frailties and a stunning picture of life in London, at the court and the theatre, in his own household, and in his Navy office.
In the 18th century, a diary of extraordinary emotional interest was kept by Jonathan Swift and sent to Ireland as The Journal to Stella (written 1710–13; published 1766–68). This work is a surprising amalgam of ambition, affection, wit, and freakishness. The most notable English diary of the late 18th century was that of the novelist Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay); it was published in 1842–46. James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), a genuine diary though somewhat expanded, was one of the first to be published in its author’s lifetime.Interest in the diary increased greatly in the first part of the 19th century, in which period many of the great diaries, including Pepys’s, were first published.
In the 20th century, the diary of explorer Robert F. Scott (1910–12), the Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927), the two-volume Journal of André Gide (1939, 1954), Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl (1947), and the five-volume Diary of Virginia Woolf (1977–84) are among the most notable examples.
The diary form began to flower in the late Renaissance, when the importance of the individual began to be stressed. In addition to their revelation of the diarist’s personality, diaries have been of immense importance for the recording of social and political history. Journal d’un bourgeois de Paris, kept by an anonymous French priest from 1409 to 1431 and continued by another hand to 1449, for example, is invaluable to the historian of the reigns of Charles VI and Charles VII. The same kind of attention to historical events characterizes Memorials of the English Affairs by the lawyer and parliamentarian Bulstrode Whitelocke (1605–75) and the diary of the French Marquis de Dangeau (1638–1720), which spans the years 1684 to his death. The English diarist John Evelyn is surpassed only by the greatest diarist of all, Samuel Pepys, whose diary from January 1, 1660 to May 31, 1669, gives both an astonishingly frank picture of his foibles and frailties and a stunning picture of life in London, at the court and the theatre, in his own household, and in his Navy office.
In the 18th century, a diary of extraordinary emotional interest was kept by Jonathan Swift and sent to Ireland as The Journal to Stella (written 1710–13; published 1766–68). This work is a surprising amalgam of ambition, affection, wit, and freakishness. The most notable English diary of the late 18th century was that of the novelist Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay); it was published in 1842–46. James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), a genuine diary though somewhat expanded, was one of the first to be published in its author’s lifetime.Interest in the diary increased greatly in the first part of the 19th century, in which period many of the great diaries, including Pepys’s, were first published.
In the 20th century, the diary of explorer Robert F. Scott (1910–12), the Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927), the two-volume Journal of André Gide (1939, 1954), Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl (1947), and the five-volume Diary of Virginia Woolf (1977–84) are among the most notable examples.
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Narrative Nonfiction
Narrative nonfiction, often also referred to as creative nonfiction, is a literary term for a text that presents a true story written in a style more closely associated with fiction. The writer pays close attention to elements of plot structure, character development and themes to make the story as compelling as possible.Narrative nonfiction is by no means a recent innovation, although the exact phrasing of the category may be somewhat new and it has experienced a surge of popularity in the early 21st century. Individuals have always written memoirs and autobiographies as means to share their personal stories and the circumstances of the world in which they lived, though their emphasis may not have been written with a narrative style.
Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" describes the murder of the Clutter family and the subsequent trial, conviction and hanging of the perpetrators, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. Capote wrote the book in the style of a journalist, conducting exhaustive research and interviews, but without recording or taking notes of any kind. Additionally, Capote asserts himself as the narrator of the book, includes personal information, and makes no attempt to appear unbiased. Other books like Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and Mailer's "Armies of the Night" walked the line between novel and memoir. The reader might not know what was true, what had been altered to protect a living person's identity or what had been exaggerated for dramatic effect.
Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" describes the murder of the Clutter family and the subsequent trial, conviction and hanging of the perpetrators, Richard Hickock and Perry Smith. Capote wrote the book in the style of a journalist, conducting exhaustive research and interviews, but without recording or taking notes of any kind. Additionally, Capote asserts himself as the narrator of the book, includes personal information, and makes no attempt to appear unbiased. Other books like Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and Mailer's "Armies of the Night" walked the line between novel and memoir. The reader might not know what was true, what had been altered to protect a living person's identity or what had been exaggerated for dramatic effect.
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