PROSE ANALYSIS

NAMA FADILAH LINTUHASENG

NIM E02414102

TUGAS PROSE ANALYSIS

            DEFINITION OF PROSE

            Prose is a form of language that has no formal metrical structure. It applies a natural flow of speech, and ordinary grammatical structure rather than rhythmic structure, such as in the case of traditional poetry.

            According to Hugh Holman (1972) prose is most meant to designate a consious, cultivated writing, a listing ideas, a catalogue of objects. And while prose like a verse in that good prose has rhythm, it is unlike verse in those schemes or marked by such devices of reiteration as free-verse uses. Some of the qualities of prose are :

1.      It is without sustained rhytmic regularity

2.      It has some logical, gramatical order

3.      It characterized by style, though the style will vary from writer to writer

4.      It will secure variety of expression through diction and through sentence structure

According to M.H.Abams (1993) prose is an inclusive term for all discourse, spoken, or written, which is not patterned into the lines and rhythms either of metric verse or of free verse.

PROSE ANALYSIS

When you write a piece of Prose Analysis, the framework is very different from that of an essay. You no longer need an introduction, an argument and a conclusion. Instead, you write a lean and incisive critical response to the prose passage, addressing the subject matter, theme, form and style, tone and atmosphere of the text, and ending with a personal response to the text.

ü  Subject Matter

            Give a very brief synopsis in your own words, and try to capture the atmosphere of the passage by including descriptive detail.

ü  Theme

            An expression of the theme in an incisive and economical manner could, in fact, provide your analysis with an excellent introduction; you are, however, unlikely to deduce the theme(s) until you have established the subject matter in your own mind. Often, the question set for a prose close study asks particularly for you to comment on the theme of the text, for example childhood, family relationships, the industrial environment, and in this case, your focus on the theme demands more commentary than usual.

ü  Purpose

In addition to the theme, you should be able to comment on what you think is the writer’s purpose in the passage: is it entertaining? is it didactic? is it narrative?

ü  Form

            This allows you to examine the shape and structure of the passage, and evaluate the influence of its structure on the mood and meaning. You should check such features as the paragraphing structure; the sentence structure and syntax; the rhythm. Consider carefully the potential effect of these qualities on the meaning, tone or atmosphere of the passage.

ü  Style

            Evaluate features of the text such as the choice of vocabulary: is it simple, ornate, archaic, technical, pretentious? Highlight the use of figures of speech, such as metaphor, personification, hyperbole, onomatopoeia, bathos, and alliteration, and comment on their appropriateness.

ü  Tone and Atmosphere

            Try to establish the atmosphere of the piece, and perhaps the tone, which is attitude of the writer to his subject : is it sympathetic, satirical, sentimental, objective, compassionate, indifferent, aggressive?

ü  Final Impression

            Finish with a paragraph that evaluates the whole passage again, and expresses how you feel about the experience of reading it. For example, does the passage leave you with a sense of enrichment, or have you experienced something new? Do you think the writer had a good idea but expressed it badly, or was the text wholly successfull

            PROSE ANALYSIS METHODOLOGY

            Most poems are short, and so it is possible to analyse a whole text. And when analysing poetry we noticed that we could get a long way by concentrating on foregrounded features: particularly deviation and parallelism.

            On the other hand, for novels and short stories, because they are much longer, stylistic analysis can only be done on selected extracts which are representative or specially interesting for some reason. And one of the results of this extra length is that effects in prose are often spread through whole texts, or textual extracts, and so, just looking at foregrounded features will not necessarily reveal enough of what we need to show. This is why we have developed a prose methodology checksheet to use for prose analysis, and which we will use when discussing the passage from Bilgewater, which you have just done some initial work on.

            The complete methodology checksheet can be found further down the menu of this topic, and we suggest that you have a quick look through it after you have read this page and before you do the rest of the 'Bilgewatery' work. First, though, it will be helpful if we say a little about the purpose and structure of the checksheet.

            The checksheet, like the other checksheets we have provided so far, is meant to help you be systematic in your work and not miss important 'hidden' linguistic features and patterns. But it is essential to notice that not everything you systematically examine will turn out to be important interpretatively. When we write up stylistic analyses for essay, articles or books, not surprisingly, the areas which turned out not to be very revealing are omitted from discussion. But you still need to do the initial systematic work in order to find out what the most relevant aspects of analysis are.

            DEFINITION ESSAY

            An essay is a piece of writing that methodically analyses and evaluates a topic or issue.  Fundamentally, an essay is designed to get your academic opinion on a particular matter.Many students get confused about the word 'opinion' in academic writing, and think that academic writing should just stick to reporting the facts and forget about opinion altogether. 

            Writing a great essay is not about simply surveying and re-telling existing ideas. Instead, a good essay takes into account various opinions and points of view and puts forward an argument that reflects the writer's informed opinion.  Before you begin planning any essay, then, it’s crucial to have a clear idea of what you think about your topic; you need to have a position, argument, or clear stance on a topic, that you defend with evidence and argument.  This is what's called your thesis statement.

            According to (Musai, B.2004) Essay is a form of writing, which is relatively short and could be literary or non literary writing. The word essay for the first time was used be a French writer, Michele Montaigne, as a matter of fact the origin of the word essay comes from French, which means "to try" or "to attempt" to write .The period when Montaigne started to write essays, even though we find some forms of essays before this period, makes us understand that essay is the newest form of writing in comparison with poetry, prose and drama.

            Essay is a collection of ideas, mainly literary ideas, or a single idea, written and backed up by some supporting facts. Most of essays have pattern which they are written. English teachers use them frequently as a testing tool, but today they are also a major part in students' entrance exam for college or University (Fleming, Grace, 2010).

            DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PROSE AND ESSAY

            Prose and essay are different in many ways.In general It is somewhat similar to prose because it is written in lines. Sometimes it could also be similar to prose in content especially narrative and descriptive essays. The difference between the essay and the narration is that narration contains more figurative expressions, whereas essay contains facts and supporting arguments. This also concludes that essay differs a lot with poem and drama.