(a) an overview of prose:
With the development of literature, the meaning and scope of prose, as one of literary genres, are constantly evolving. In ancient China, prose was called "prose" compared with verse and parallel prose, that is, all literary and non-literary works were called "prose". Modern prose refers to poetry, drama and novels. Including prose, essays, essays, travel notes, biographies, biographies, memoirs, reportage, etc. In recent years, because biographies, reportage and essays have developed into unique styles, people tend to narrow the scope of essays.
(2) Overview of ancient and modern prose:
1. Ancient prose: In ancient China, in order to distinguish it from rhymes and parallel prose, all prose articles, including classics, biographies and history books, were called prose.
The development of China's ancient prose;
Pre-Qin Prose: Including hundred schools of thought Prose and Historical Prose. Hundred schools of thought's essays are mainly expositions, such as The Analects of Confucius, Mencius and Zhuangzi. Historical prose mainly focuses on historical themes, and all articles and books describing historical events and historical figures are historical prose, such as Zuo Zhuan.
Prose in Han Dynasty: Historical Records by Sima Qian in the Western Han Dynasty pushed biographical prose to an unprecedented peak. After the Eastern Han Dynasty, individual prose forms such as books, notes, inscriptions, essays and prefaces began to appear.
Prose in Tang and Song Dynasties: Under the impetus of the ancient prose movement, prose writing became increasingly complex, and literary prose appeared, resulting in many excellent works such as landscape travel notes, fables, biographies and essays, and the famous "Eight Masters in Tang and Song Dynasties" also emerged at this time.
Prose in the Ming Dynasty: First, the "Seven Scholars" were mainly archaized. Later, the Tang and Song Schools advocated that all works flowed from the chest, the most famous of which was Gui Youguang.
Prose in Qing Dynasty: Prose in Qing Dynasty, represented by Tongcheng School, pays attention to the embodiment of "righteousness". Yao Nai, a representative writer of Tongcheng School, summed up the style of ancient Chinese prose, and classified it into 13 categories, including argumentative essays, preface and postscript, recitation, calligraphy, preface, imperial edict, biography, epitaph, miscellaneous words, inscriptions, eulogies and inscriptions.
2. Modern prose: refers to the literary style on an equal footing with poetry, novel and drama. It is characterized by expressing the author's views and feelings and revealing its social significance through the description of some fragments or life events in real life. Can be created on the basis of real people. It doesn't necessarily have complete stories and characters, but focuses on expressing the author's feelings about life, with flexible selection of materials and strong lyricism. The "I" in prose is usually the author himself; Language is not limited by rhythm, and its forms of expression are diverse. It can be combined with narration, discussion, lyricism and description, or it can be emphasized. According to the needs of content and theme, a certain artistic conception is created by describing typical details in life, portraying images, portraying psychology, rendering the environment and setting off the atmosphere. Like poetry, we can also use artistic techniques such as symbols. Prose has many forms of expression, such as essays, short comments, essays, sketches, features, travel notes, correspondence, letters, diaries, memoirs and so on.
(3) the classification of prose:
According to the content and nature of prose, it can be divided into the following categories:
Narrative Prose: Prose focusing on writing characters' notes. This kind of prose describes people and things concretely and prominently, and expresses the author's understanding and feelings at the same time. It also contains strong lyrical elements, and the lines are full of feelings. Narrative prose focuses on reflecting the essence of things from the development and changes of narrative characters and events, and selects themes from one angle to express the author's thoughts and feelings with factors such as time, place, characters and events. Such as Lu Xun.
Lyric prose: prose that pays attention to expressing the author's thoughts and feelings. This kind of prose narrates and describes specific things, but usually it doesn't run through the whole story. Its outstanding feature is strong lyricism. It is either straightforward or touching, full of poetry and painting, even if it describes natural scenery, it also gives profound social content and thoughts and feelings. Excellent lyric prose, sincere feelings and sincere language. Symbolism and metaphor are commonly used to put ideas in images, which have strong artistic appeal, such as Mao Dun's Praise of Poplar, Wei Wei's The Truth of Parting, Zhu Ziqing's Moonlight on the Lotus Pond and Bing Xin's Praise of Cherry Blossoms.
Landscape Prose: Prose mainly describing scenery. This kind of articles mostly express their feelings while writing the scenery, or borrow the scenery to express their feelings, or express their feelings with the scenery, grasp the characteristics of the scenery, use the method of changing scenery according to the spatial order, and take the observed changes as the context of the full text. Vivid scenery description can not only explain the background and render the atmosphere, but also set off the thoughts and feelings of the characters and better express the theme. Such as Liu's.
Philosophical Prose: Philosophy is the infiltration of feelings, the spark of thoughts, the condensation of thoughts and the crystallization of wisdom. It runs through ancient and modern times, across the world, through the life society, stays in the parents' home of life, and flashes in the thousands of landscapes in the field of thinking. A clever author is good at grasping the flash of philosophy, taking various forms in pen and ink, and writing rich and thought-provoking beautiful articles. This beauty is often recited. Baptism and sublimation, this internalization is undoubtedly huge. Philosophical prose participates in the truth of life with various images, thus revealing the eternal similarity between all things. Because of its profundity and soul-penetrating integration, it gives us a shocking aesthetic effect of penetrating the essence through phenomena and revealing the inside story of things and concepts. Grasp the thinking mode embodied in philosophical prose and understand the profound cultural background and accumulation contained in philosophical prose. 1. Symbolic thinking in philosophical prose: Philosophical prose constitutes a symbolic expression of ontology because it transcends the meaning of daily experience and its own natural physical attributes. It abandons shallowness, but reaches a state of empathy with people's thoughts and resonance with life and gas field. We get rational awakening and carefree spirit from symbols. From the calm of the soul to the tremor of the soul, it transcends the general emotional reaction and stands at the top of the spirit. 2. Associative thinking of philosophical prose: Because philosophical prose is a three-dimensional and comprehensive thinking system, after association, the content of the article is richer, not thin, and it integrates nature, society and life. 3. Emotional thinking of philosophical prose: Philosophical prose is essentially a dependence of ideological expression on emotion. Because the author has emotional participation in the process of understanding life, and the result of understanding is the fusion of emotion and imagination, the thoughts in philosophical prose are not ordinary dry discussions, but thoughts containing life emotions and full of aesthetic emotional juice. Between the lines of philosophical prose, we can understand the depth of the soul and the original meaning of life. This is the beauty of philosophical prose art.
(4) The main features of prose:
1. The shape is scattered but the spirit is not scattered.
"Form and dispersion" mainly means that prose is widely used and free, and is not limited by time and space; Means of expression are not limited to one mode: they can describe the development of events, describe people, convey feelings with things and make comments. And the author can freely adjust and change according to the content. "sentimental" is mainly from the conception of prose, that is, the theme to be expressed in prose must be clear and concentrated, no matter how extensive the content is and how flexible the means of expression are, it serves to better express the theme.
In order to be scattered in shape but not in spirit, we should pay attention to the internal relationship between materials and central ideas in material selection, so that materials can run through an organic whole with certain clues in structure. Common clues in prose are: (1) taking things with profound or symbolic significance as clues; ⑵ Taking the "I" in the works as a clue and "I" as a clue, because I wrote what I saw, heard, thought and felt, and Kan Kan and Kan Kan talked freely, making readers feel more real, cordial and touching.
2. Deep artistic conception, focusing on expressing the author's life feelings, strong lyricism and sincere emotion.
With the help of imagination and association, the author writes from the shallow to the deep, from the real to the virtual, in turn, which can integrate feelings into the scenery, express the author's true feelings in things, realize the unity of things and me, show more profound thoughts and make readers understand more profound truths.
3. Beautiful and concise language, rich in literary talent.
The so-called elegance means that the language of prose is fresh, bright, lively and full of musical sense. Prose is like a trickle, jingling, catchy and sincere. The so-called conciseness means that the language of prose is unpretentious, natural and fluent, and a few words can describe a vivid image, outline the scene of the dispatcher and show a far-reaching artistic conception. Prose tries to write a scene as if it were in front of you, which is refreshing.
Prose is known as "beautiful prose", which not only has spiritual views and beautiful artistic conception, but also has fresh, meaningful and unpretentious literary talent. Reading some good prose regularly can not only enrich knowledge, broaden horizons and cultivate noble thoughts and sentiments, but also learn the skills of selecting materials, planning articles and choosing words and sentences, and improve their language expression ability.
(5) Prose appreciation skills:
Prose appreciation focuses on grasping the relationship between "form" and "spirit". Prose appreciation should pay attention to the following points:
1. read prose with literacy.
Every poem with exquisite conception, beautiful artistic conception or implicit writing often has a look. When appreciating prose, we should try to find a look that can reveal the overall theme and make the finishing point, so as to understand the reason and purpose of the author's writing. The setting of a look varies from text to text, which can be a sentence, a sentence, a detail, an emotion, or even a scene.
2. When reading prose, we should grasp the clues, clarify the author's ideas and accurately grasp the intention of the article.
Structure is the skeleton of the article, and clues are the main line of the article. They are closely related. Grasping the clues in prose can help us clearly understand the idea of the work, which not only helps us understand the author's writing intention, but also appreciates the author's ability to plan the layout of the article, so as to grasp the vivid essence of prose through the appearance of "scattered" and analyze the intention of the article along the author's thinking. Clues usually include: (1) the image of things as a clue, (2) the development of feelings as a clue, such as Yang Shuo's litchi honey; (3) Taking time sequence as a clue, such as Liu's Three Diaries of the Yangtze River; (4) Taking spatial order as a clue, such as Zhu Ziqing's green; 5] Take the activities of characters as clues, such as Lu Xun's "From Baicaoyuan to San Tan Yin Yue"; (6) Take things as clues, such as Tang Tao's trivial memories.
3. Pay attention to the characteristics of prose expression and deeply understand the content of the article.
Prose often entrusts with things. In order to make readers feel the rich connotation of entrustment, the author often gives a detailed description of what he has written, which is called "form comes from nature". When reading an article, we should grasp the characteristics of "form", see "spirit" from "form" and deeply understand the content of the article.
4. Pay attention to expand association and understand the charm of the article.
The ways of association are: ① series connection: for example, Orion, Shang Shu → Zhong Bai old man → Dong Kun; (2) radiant: for example, Land focuses on "land" and writes "Love life, defend land and build land"; 3 False support: such as Praise of Poplar; (4) Picture style: like talking about mountains and rivers. Pay attention to enriching associations, from shallow to deep, from real to virtual, so as to appreciate the charm of the article and understand more profound truth.
5. Taste the language of prose.
A major feature of prose is the beauty of language. Good prose is concise and beautiful, free and flexible, and close to spoken English. Beautiful prose is full of philosophy, poetry and painting. The language of excellent essayists has different language styles: Lu Xun's prose language is concise and profound, Mao Dun's prose language is exquisite and profound, Guo Moruo's prose language is magnificent, Ba Jin's prose language is simple and beautiful, and Zhu Ziqing's prose language is exquisite and profound. Bing Xin's prose language is euphemistic and lively, Sun Li's prose language is plain, Liu's prose language is bold and unrestrained, and Yang Shuo's prose language is delicate. What is elegant prose language? The language of some essays is often different according to the content. For example, Lu Xun's "In Memory of Liu Hezhen Jun" is as sharp as a dagger; The language of "Good Story" is gorgeous as a cloud; The language of kites is as dignified as a deep pool. If you appreciate the language style of prose, you can appreciate the content of prose more deeply.
Poetry in prose
A modern lyric style with the characteristics of both poetry and prose. It combines the expressive power of poetry with some characteristics of prose description. It belongs to poetry in essence, with poetic emotion and fantasy, giving readers aesthetic feeling and imagination, but retaining poetic prose details in content. It has the appearance of prose in form, unlike poetry, but it lacks inherent musical beauty and sense of rhythm. Prose poems generally express the author's small feelings on the basis of social and life background, and pay attention to describing the fluctuations and fragments of thoughts and feelings caused by objective life. These characteristics determine the richness of its theme and the brevity and flexibility of its form.
Prose poetry is a modern literary style developed to meet the psychological characteristics of people in modern society, such as sensitivity, consideration and complexity. Although China had similar prose poems more than 1000 years ago, many European writers wrote poetic prose in 16 and 17 centuries. However, as an independent literary style, it became popular after the middle of19th century. The first person who formally used the term "small prose poem" and the French poet Baudelaire deliberately adopted this genre. He believes that prose poetry is "enough to adapt to the lyrical turmoil of the soul, the fluctuation of dreams and the shock of consciousness". In China's new literature, prose poetry is an imported literary variety. Four Chapters of Classical Chinese Translation of Turgenev's Prose Poems, published in China's Novels, Volume 2, No.7 19 18 (listed in the column of "Novels" at that time, translated by Liu Bannong), is the earliest translation of foreign prose poems in China. 55438+09 18, Volume IV. Published a translation of Liu Bannong's Indian work "I Walk in the Snow". At the end of the article, it is pointed out that this is a well-structured prose poem. The name "Prose Poetry" began to appear in newspapers and periodicals in China. The nature and characteristics of this style have been discussed theoretically in Literature Tour (1922) and works by Xidi (Zheng Zhenduo), Wang Pingling and others.
Liu Bannong, Xu Yunuo, Xu Dishan, Jiao Juyin and Xu Zhimo published prose poems during the May 4th Movement. The prose poems of Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Zhu Ziqing, Bing Xin, Guo Feng, Michelle and other writers have exerted considerable influence on China's new literature, among which Lu Xun's prose poetry collection Weeds and the former Soviet writer Gorky's Haiyan have the highest ideological and artistic achievements and the greatest influence.