(Introduction to Literature) Prose-Fiction

Members : (Class B)

1. Muhimmah Hudhriyati (13020117130034) 

2. Calvina Izumi NN (13020117130037)

3. Dhea Savira K (13020117130044)

Literature : Prose Fiction

Works of prose fiction, especially novels, get reviewed in daily newspapers; occasionally even on television. Some get made into blockbuster movies.

So, for quite a lot of people, prose fiction is what literature is. Not that this is a historically specific phenomenon. In Elizabethan England it was much smarter to be a sonneteer than a prose fiction author. Again, that is not the way it is now.

Even if people do not think of literature automatically as prose, they may assume that it is fiction – but that is also a historically specific way of thinking. 'Prose' and 'fiction', these are important concepts, and – like all concepts – they shouldn't be taken for granted.

Prose fiction genres – and narrative

Prose fiction consists of many sub-genres. Some of these are usually defined quite simply by length. The main categories are the novel and the short story. Some extremely short prose fiction texts – for example, some of the late writings of Samuel Beckett – have been published by themselves in very slim volumes. If it is a single prose fiction narrative, and long enough to have been published originally as a book in itself (or even in two or more volumes), then it's a novel. 

Narrative, which is much more general than "novel" or even "prose fiction". A narrative is a sequence of events, fictional or non-fictional, told or narrated by someone – the narrator – to someone else. In literary narrative, the person – known or unknown, named or anonymous – who narrates the narrative is the narrator. The narratee is the person to whom the narrative seems to be directed : in that sense, producing a narrative involves creating a reader, just as it involves creating a narrator and characters.

There is also a category of prose fiction texts between: texts that can fill a whole book but do not seem quite big enough to be in the same category as War and Peace, Ulysses, or even Pride and Prejudice. We might choose to call these short novels or long short stories.

If we put the terminology for fictional narratives in an international context, other questions arise. What we call a 'novel' in English is, in some other languages, including French, German, and Danish, a 'roman' (pronounced in various ways). This is another sign that the categories that we use do not come from any infallible authority. Exactly the same extended prose narrative have come to be called by a name that derives for the Anglo-French term romance in some languages and from Latin for something new (novus – novella – novel) in others.