What is prose, its history and modernity

The answer to the question of what is prose, apparently, should be sought in the sources of ancient literature. In the traditional literature of Ancient Greece, any artistic text was called poetry. In Greek art the concept of beautiful, artistic, was firmly fused with rhythm. Therefore, most of the works of ancient Greek literature belonged to poetry. Later speech, organized rhythmically, was called "verse", in contrast to speech irregular. The successors and successors of ancient Greek culture, the ancient Romans, it received the name of "prose" (prōsa). What is the prose in Roman literature? This speech is free, not connected with rhythm and repetition.

It would seem that there is a clear criterion that differentiates concepts, but in fact everything is much more complicated. Prose and poetry do not have clear boundaries. There is frank prose, which has no rhythm, but is broken into stanzas, like poetry, called "white verse." And, on the contrary, rhythmic, rhyme-strings, attributed by the author to prose, albeit rhythmic. So what is prose?

Among the works of ancient Greek literature, apart from poetry, there were prose genres of works of art, such as myth, fairy tale, tradition and comedy. They did not belong to poetry and to literature in general, because the myth served religion, the tale was a household genre, and the tradition was historical prose, comedy, ridiculing low-level instincts, related to mundane entertainments. And scientific research works, speeches of speakers and politicians were genres of non-fiction prose.

It can be concluded that in antiquity, ancient Roman, and later in European medieval culture, prose was valued below poetry. Prosaic genres were regarded as household or publicistic literature that does not have artistic value. While poetry was rated very highly and was considered an artistic ideal.

In the second half of the Middle Ages, changes in society led to new trends in literature. Gradually, poetry loses its privileged status. In connection with the active development of trade and industry, culture developed and other non-poetic genres became more interesting to other social strata, new forms appeared, such as novels and novels. With the development of prose, a novel is gradually forming. The former favorites, high poetic genres, do not immediately lose their leading position, they give way to it gradually, but still remain in the literature.

In the 19th century, the question of what prose is no longer matters. Prose writers become leading writers, their works are widely known and highly valued by society. They are notable figures in the literary process, the public listens to them. In the best prose works they manage to rise to high generalizations, to which only the outstanding creators of odes, tragedies and poems could ascend in the epoch of the reign of poetry.

At the end of the XX century, along with art in general, the complexity of the literature. It begins to compete with real life. Its goal is changing, it ceases to copy life and begins to model reality in its own way, creating a new model of literature. It is called "literature of postmodernism."

Traditional literature extended the reader's view of the world and the inner nature of man. Its goal was to have a positive impact on the individual and on society, the improvement of the world and man, the ennobling of the soul, the development of aesthetic and ethical qualities.

Modern Russian prose, like all contemporary literature, does not aim at cognition and change of the world. In it tendencies to a game way of existence of the author are shown. According to many modern writers, literature, and prose in particular, have lost the right to teach someone life.