PAPER ASSIGNMENT

PROSE

ARRANGED BY:

Tania Mega Putri (1713042058)

Dicky Rinaldo H (1713042040)

Fitrotunnisa Alhaniah (17130420052)

Chita Widya Ningrum (1713042054)

ENGLISH EDUCATION

LANGUANGE AND ART EDUCATION

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

UNIVERSITY OF LAMPUNG
 PROSE, POETRY, DRAMA

INTRODUCTION

Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure
and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure (as in traditional poetry). The
English word "prose" is derived from the Latin prōsa, which literally translates as "straight-
forward." While there are critical debates on the construction of prose, its simplicity and
loosely defined structure has led to its adoption for the majority of spoken dialogue, factual
discourse as well as topical and fictional writing. It is commonly used, for example, in
literature, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcasting, film, history, philosophy,
law and many other forms of communication. Prose First Known Use: 14th century.

Poetry is the art which uses words as both speech and song to reveal the realities that the
senses record, the feelings salute, the mind perceives and the shaping imagination orders.
(Ngoran, 2016).

The word of Drama emanating from Greek language “Drau” which means is “Action” or
does something. Aristoteles (in Endraswara, 2011) said that drama is “a representation of an
action”. Stories like this become an interesting drama. Drama which too easy to conjecture is
precisely not interested. Correlation with perform on stage, another explanation from
Whittaker (2008:5) she explain that drama is the process, something that is ongoing.
Whittaker also said that drama can cover rehearsals and work up to a performance and also
the process of learning. Finally, drama is kinds of literature that has written with dialogues
that observe the elements which action and movement that performed on the stage.

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 PROSE

Definition Prose by Expert

'Prose is the words in their best order.' (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk : July 12,
1827).

'All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.' (Moliere, Le Bourgeouis
Gentilhomme : 1671).

'Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end.' (Jeremy Bentham, Packe in The
Life of John Stuart Mill : 1954).

'Prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or
universality that lends it a youthful beauty.' (John Cheever : 1982).

Varieties of Prose

a. Descriptive Prose

Descriptive writing describes things as they are or as they appear to be. It can be the

description of a person or a landscape or an event. In descriptive writing, we are able

to see things as they are or were seen or heard or imagined by the describer.

Here is a description of Mr. Squeers in Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39):

Mr. Squeers' appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye, and the popular
prejudice runs in favour of two. The eye he had was unquestionably, useful, but decidedly
not ornamental: being of a greenish grey, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street
door. The blank side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very
sinister appearance, especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered
closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was
brushed stiffly up from a low protruding fore head, which assorted well with his harsh voice
and coarse manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle size;
he wore a white neckerchief with long ends, and a suit of scholastic black; but his coat
sleeves being a great deal too long, and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at
ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself
so respectable.

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This is a graphic description of the appearance of Mr. Squeers. The details are so sharp that
we can easily visualize the person. We are told about his height, his eye, his face, hair,
forehead and dress. A successful description, it enables us to picture the person vividly.

b. Narrative Prose

A narrative is a description of events. It may deal with external or internal events.

By internal events, we mean the thoughts, feelings and emotions of individuals.

Narrative writing tries to recreate an actual experience or an imaginary one in a way

that we are able to experience it mentally. Autobiographies, biographies, histories are

narratives of fact. The short story and novel come under the category of nargative fiction.
The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are examples of narrative writing.

c. Expository Prose

Expository writing deals in definition, explanation or interpretation. It includes

writing on science, law, philosophy, technology, political science, history and

criticism. Exposition is a form of logical presentation. Here is the example.

In the leg there are two bones, the tibia and fibula. The tibia or shin-bone is

long and strong and bears the weight of the body. The fibula or splint bone is

an equally long but much slenderer bone, and is attached to the tibia as a pin

is to a brooch.

(Leonard Hill, Manual of Human Physiology).

This piece clearly defines the two bones, the tibiaand the fibula. But this can be read

as literature.

Form of Prose

a. Short Story

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A short story is complete in itself. A short story thus has intensity and a singleness of
purpose. There is no single acceptable definition of a short story. All that we can say is that
it is

short, has a plot and character(s) and has a beginning, a middle and an end.

According to one definition, a short story is 'a relatively short narrative which is

designed to produce a single dominant effect and which-contains the elements of

drama'.

b. Novel

When we talk about a novel, we

usually mean a piece of fiction, written in prose and of a certain length. A novel is

an individual vision of the novelist. It is a picture of life as viewed by the writer. It

has a story which tells us what happened and a plot which tells us how it happened.

c. Essay

An essay is a piece of prose compositian usually of moderate length. The word

'essay' derives from the French word essai or attempt. It "attempts" to throw some

light on the subject under discussion.

There are two kinds of essays. One is informal or personal and the other is formal.

You can say anything you like in an informal essay so long as it is interesting and

pleasing to the reader. It is purpose to delight and entertain the reader.

A formal essay is a serious one and it weighs, evaluates and judges. It discusses the

merits and the demerits of the topic in question. The style is objective and serious. A

good essay however, is balanced, thoughtful and not biased. The judgement is based on fact.

d. Biography and Autobiography

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A biography is the story of the life of an individual. Our concern here is with

biography as a piece of literature. In an autobiography, the writer attempts to reveal selected

experiences of his/ her own life in restrospect. Here the picture presented is necessarily
subjective. It presents the events and impressions of the past as recollected by the writer at
the time s/he is writing the autobiography.

POETRY

Poetry is the art which uses words as both speech and song to reveal the realities that the
senses record, the feelings salute, the mind perceives and the shaping imagination orders.
Sometimes, people make the same between prose and poetry, but there is a very huge
different between prose and poetry, the majority of poetry definitions are limited to
characteristics such as verse, rhyme, and meter, which are traditionally regarded as the
classical elements that distinguish poetry from prose.
The genre of poetry is often subdivided into the two major categories of narrative and lyric
poetry. Narrative poetry includes genres such as the epic long poem, the romance and the
ballad, which tell stories with clearly developed, structured plots. The shorter lyric poetry,
the focus of thefollowing comments, is mainly concerned with one event, impression or idea.

Example of lyric poetry, an old English entitled riddles and charms:

Wen, wen, little wen,

Here you must not build, here have no abode,

But you must go north to the nearby hill

Where, poor wretch, you have a brother.

He will lay a leaf at your head.

Under the paw of the wolf, under the eagle’s wing,

Under the claw of the eagle, may you ever decline!

Shrink like coal on the hearth!

Wizen like filth on the wall!

Become as small as a grain of linseed,

and far smaller than a hand-worm’s hip-bone and so very small

That you are at last nothing at all.

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 DRAMA

According to Lynch (2012) most successful playwrights follow the theories of playwriting
and drama that were established over two thousand years ago by a man named Aristotle. In
his works the Poetics Aristotle outlined the six elements of drama in his critical analysis of
the classical Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex written by the Greek playwright, Sophocles, in the
fifth century B.C. The six elements as they are involve: Plot, Theme, Characters, dialogue,
Music, and Spectacle. In addition Lynch (2012) explains that elements of drama are:

1. Plot is what happens in a play; the order of events, the story as opposed to the theme;
what happens rather than what it means.
2. Theme is what the play means as opposed to what happens (plot); the main idea
within the play.
3. Character is the personality or the part an actor represents in a play; a role played by
an actor in a play.
4. Dialogue is the word choices made by the playwright and the enunciation of the
actors delivering the lines.
5. Music is Aristotle meant the sound, rhythm and melody of the speeches.
6. Spectacles are the visual elements of the production of a play; the scenery, costumes,
and special effects in a production.

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 SUMMARY

Prose is divided into four kinds in general, that are narrative prose, descriptive prose,
argumentative prose, and expository prose. Narrative prose is a prose that purposed to
entertain the readers by a story; in the other hand, descriptive prose is providing general or
specific information in details; beside that, Argumentative prose is concerned with providing
cogent argument and logic in order to convince the reader on a point or points; finally, there
is expository or informative prose which sets out to present information giving or explaining
related facts and ideas. Prose is written in non-metrical ordinary language, it is written in
paragraphs and chapters. It is made up of characters and incidences which are organized in a
chronological order. It is written in both long and short sentences.

From the fact given above, the similarity of these three kind of literature is the purpose of the
writer when they write the literature (prose, poetry, drama) that is to express the writer’s
feeling or to deliver information from the writers to the readers; besides, the differences is
the form of literature: prose, poetry and drama have a very different form, and the language
features of each kind of literature is also different, like in poetry: the writers often use a
beautiful words to express their feeling, but it’s different from prose and drama.

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 QUESTION AND ANSWER

1. Risa: why is prose impotant to be learned?

Basically we are a student who have a study in language(linguistic) and prose is one of the
material we have to mastered. Prose is also part of the linguistic and that shows how good
we are in capability of constructing the language

2. Anggie: can all interesting story are called narrative prose? Can you tell me more example
about narrative prose?

Yes, every story that entertains is narrative prose. Because prose has 2 braches of varieties,
fiction and narrative. In fiction we have short story and novel and we have biography and
autobiography in narrative.

3. Dewi: How can prose be called as free and well-organized at the same time?

What makes prose free is it does not require us to follow certain rules such as how many
stanzas, what kind of rhytms and rhyms. However, prose still has its own structure based on
its kind and function. Therefore, prose is a well-organized work.

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GLOSSARY

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 REFERENCES

S Endraswara. Yogyakarta: Medpress, 2008. 124, 2008. Metode pembelajaran drama:

apresiasi, ekspresi, dan pengkajian.

Milawati, Teti (2011) PENINGKATAN KEMAMPUAN ANAK MEMAHAMI

DRAMA DAN MENULIS TEKS DRAMA MELALUI MODEL PEMBELAJARAN
SOMATIS AUDITORI VISUAL INTELEKTUAL (SAVI). S2 thesis, Universitas
Pendidikan Indonesia.

Hilary Gatti. 2013. The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in

England. Routledge: New York.

Robin C. Whittaker. 2011. The Casting and Makeup of Drama, Theatre, and
Performance Studies in Canada: A Report on the Discipline by the Numbers (and
Letters). St. Thomas University

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