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Prose and Poetry
Prose and Poetry
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.
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
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.
“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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