PROSE

PROSE
 Discourse which uses sentences usually forming paragraphs to express ideas, feelings and actions.
 A form of language that has no formal metrical structure.
 The ordinary language people use in speaking or writing.

FORMS OF PROSE
 It includes the following:
1. Novel and Novelette
2. Short Story
3. Essay
4. Drama
1) Novel
 An extensive prose narrative.
 It is a narrative work of prose fiction that tells a story about specific human experiences over a
considerable length.
 It is simply a fictional story that is told in narrative form and that is book length.
Novelette
 Shorter than a novel but longer than a short story.
 Any short, fictional work of prose narrative.
 Have lower number of words than a novel or novella
 But a higher word count than other forms of prose fiction like short stories or microfiction.
 Novelettes are longer short stories
 Generally, between 7,500 words and 17,500 to 20,000 words, or up to about 100 pages.

2) Short Story
 A brief, artistic form of prose fiction which is centered on a single main incident and is intended to
produce a single dominant expression.
 A piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident
or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood.
 Shorter than a novel and that usually deals with only a few characters.

3) Essay
 A non-fiction prose composition of moderate length, usually expository in nature, which aims to explain
or elucidate an idea, a theory, an impression or a point of view.
 The essay may be classified as either formal and informal.
 Formal Essay
o Written with a direct purpose and follows a very strict format.
o Written in third person narrative and does not share the writer’s personality.
 Informal Essay
o Written for enjoyment; overall writing style is relaxed and less emphasis on rigid
structure.
o Shares the personality of the writer.
 A short piece of writing on a particular subject.
4) Drama
 An art form dealing with beauty particularly as it is found in the imitation of human action from nature.
 A story presented on the stage by actors impersonating characters in a given situation.
 Written in a form of a dialogue.

POETRY
POETRY
 A special kind of writing in which language, imagery, and sound combine to create a special emotional
effect.
 It is usually arranged in lines and frequently has regular rhythm that sometimes rhyme.
o Understanding Literature, MacMillan Literature Series, 1987
 A kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery designed to appeal
to our emotions and imaginations.
 Elements of Literature, Fourth Course, Holt, Rheinhart and Winston, Inc.,1989
 May be described as rhythmic imaginative language expressing the invention, thought, imagination,
taste, passion, and insight of the human soul.
 A form of literary expression that captures intense experiences or creative perceptions of the world in a
musical language.
 Modern Poetry
 Modern poetry however, is sometimes written like a prose.

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  Nevertheless, whether traditional or modern, the content of poetry is more concise than prose.
o It is highly compressed, more visual and musical and very rich in figurative language.
CHARACTERISTICS OF POETRY
CHARACTERISTICS OF POETRY
 It includes the following characteristics:
1. Rhythm
2. Imagery
3. Sense or Meaning
1) Rhythm
 The regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllable, long and short, or high-pitched or low-
pitched syllables creating a pattern in the lines of a poem.
Meter (Organized Rhythm)
 The measured pattern or grouping of syllables according to accent and length.
 Take note of the following terms:
 A group of syllables – Metric Foot
 A group of metric feet – Poetic Line or Verse
 A group of poetic lines or verses – Stanza
2) Imagery
 Refers to expressions evocative of objects of sensuous appeal.
 They are products of the writer’s creative imagination and result in making an impression or experience
more precise and vivid.
 Imagery may be in the form of direct description or may be figurative which involves the use of
figurative language and symbols.
1. Figures of Speech
 It includes the following:
 Simile
 Metaphor
 Personification
 Apostrophe
Simile
 An expressed comparison between two things belonging to different classes with the use of
conjunctions “as” and “like”.
 Examples:
 The winged seeds, where they like cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave...
o Shelly, Ode to the West Wind
 As I read it in white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
o Lowell, Patterns
Metaphor
 An implied and not an expressed comparison.
 It identifies one object with another, giving to one the qualities of the other.
 Examples:
 The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
o Noyes, The Highwayman
Personification
 The giving of human attributes and functions to inanimate objects, animals, and even ideas.
 Examples:
 A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast
o Kilmer, Trees
 A spider sewed at night
o Emily Dickinson, A Spider Sewed at Night
Apostrophe
 A direct address to a person or thing.
 Examples:
 Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
o Poe, To Helen
2. Symbols

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  These are images or concrete references that stand for something else in reality and suggest another
level of meaning.
 Example
 Blue skies and fresh spring breeze = Freedom
3) Sense or Meaning
 A poem must:
 Enlighten
 Reveal a truth
 Open new vistas
 Give new perceptions
 Enable us to understand the world around us more deeply
 See things beyond our physical senses

ELEMENTS OF POETRY
ELEMENTS OF POETRY
 It includes the following:
1. Voice
o Persona
o Tone
2. Poetic Language (Diction)
o Denotation
o Connotation
o Figure of Speech
o Imagery
o Symbol
3. Structure or Design or Poetic Form
o Syntax
o Rhythm
o Rhyme
4. Stanza
o Closed Form
o Open Form
o Couplet
o Quatrain
o Sonnet
5. Theme

VOICE
1) Voice
 The person through whom the poet speaks.
 The poet adopts a persona who acts for him and conveys his attitude toward the subject or situation.

Persona
 Who is the speaker in the poem?
 Himself
"This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me"
– Emily Dickinson
 Of Different Age and Of Opposite Sex
“An old man of seventy three
I lay with my young bride in my arms...”
– Stevie Smith
 Dual Persona
"O 'Melia, my dear, this down everything crown!
Who could have supposed i should meet you in town?
And whence such fair garments such prosperity?
O, didn't you know I'd been ruined?" Said she.
– The Ruined Maid

Tone
 The tone of a poem conveys an attitude towards its subject or theme.
 It may express affection, wonder, humility, admiration, amusement, tenderness, playfulness, humor,
sarcasm, contempt, sadness, curiosity, doubt, or grief.
 Example:
Sonnet 18

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 William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

POETIC LANGUAGE (DICTION)

Denotation
 Literal meaning of words
 Usually derived from dictionaries
 Example:
 Home = Place where one lives

Connotation
 Associative meaning of words
 Definition that carries emotional meaning
 Example:
 Home = Security, love, comfort, family, warmth

Figure of Speech
 A variation of the usual denotative way words is used.

Imagery
 Use of sensory impressions literature gives us
 Examples:
 Visual Image
o “To watch his woods fill up with snow.” – Robert Frost
 Auditory
o “The only other sound’s the sweep of easy wind and downy flake.”

Symbol
 Anything that is used by the writer to stand for another.
 In literature, symbols are used to make things easy to understand especially through visual images.
 By means of natural association, the reader will be able to relate to what the writer means.
 Example:
 Blue skies and fresh spring breeze = Freedom

STRUCTURE OR DESIGN OR POETIC FORM

Syntax
 The writer's manipulation or arrangement of words into sentences.
 Example:
 Anyone lives in a pretty how town
How pretty a town anyone lived

Rhythm
 The systematic repetition of accented and unaccented syllables which heightens the emotional effect
and creates a pattern through which the mood may be expressed.
 It brings about this musical sound in poetry which heightens the mood and feeling intended by the poet.

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  Example:
 We romped / until /the pans
 Slid from / the kit / chen shelf
 Meter
 The regular rhythm that occurs in a poem

Rhyme
 The device used by the poet to create musical effects by repeating similar vowel or consonant sounds.
 It helps to obtain emphasis and unity of expression and idea.
 The repetition of similar sounds or identical sounds at the end or middle of verses or lines in poetry
 Rhymes According to Position in a Line in Poetry
1. End Rhyme
o Occurs at the end of a verse.
o It is the most common type of rhyme.
2. Internal Rhyme
o Occurs at the middle of before the closing syllables.
3. Beginning Rhyme
o Occurs in the first syllable or syllables of a verse.
 Rhyme Scheme
 The regular pattern of rhyming words in a poem.

“All mine!" Yertle cried. "Oh, the things I now rule! A

“Penelope”
Dorothy Parker
In the pathway of the sun, A
In the footsteps of the breeze, B
Where the world and sky are one, A
He shall ride the silver seas, B
He shall cut the glittering wave C.
I shall sit at home, and rock; D
Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock; D
Brew my tea, and snip my thread; E
Bleach the linen for my bed. E
They will call him brave. C

STANZA
4) Stanza
 The length and organization of lines.

Closed Form
 Poetry with lines of equal length arranged in fixed patterns of stress and rhyme.
Open Form
 Uses lines of varying length and avoid rigid patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
 Does not use rhyme scheme and has no basic meter.

Couplet
 Two rhymed lines
Quatrain
 Group of four lines with any number of rhyme scheme.

Sonnet
 Poetry with 14 Lines
 Shakespearean Sonnet
 3 Quatrains and a Couplet
 Rhyme Scheme is: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
 Petrarchan Sonnet
 Octave (8 lines) and a Sestet (6 line)
 Rhyme Scheme is: ABBA ABBA CDE CDE

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 THEME
5) Theme
 The central idea or significant truth about life contained in the poem.

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