Comment on prose-style in English literature. What are the different

Comment on prose-style in English literature. What are the different types of Prose Style?

Ans.

PROSE SYTLE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The arrangement of words in a manner which best expresses the individuality of the author and the idea and intent in his mind, is called prose style. The best style contains an approximation or adaptation of one’s language to one’s ideas. Style is a combination of two elements; the idea to be expressed and the individuality of the writer. Style in general will include such general qualities as, diction, sentence, structure and variety, imagery, rhythm, coherence, emphasis and arrangement of ideas.

The shape of essay was given in Elizabethan age. Francis Bacon shaped the English essay as a repository of wisdom, Addison created the periodical essay loaded with morality and wit. It was Charles Lamb who gave a new shape to the genre, creating the impressionistic personal essay. In the Victorian era, the essay of ideas as written by Carlyle and Macaulay. The 20th Century has been a revival of the personal essay with a number of authors who are called the sons of Elia which include A.G. Gardiner, Max Beebom, G. K. Chesterton and Robert Lynd.

TYPES OF PROSE STYLE

The Aphoristic Style- English prose before Bacon imitates the com plex and ornate style of the Italian master, Cicero. The prose of Hook or Lyly uses long and involved. Sentence packed with subordinate clauses. Bacon rejected this model and chose Seneca as his master. The Senecan style is pithy and aphoristic. Bacon followed the Aphoristic style. The main features of the aphoristic style can be summarized as follows:

(a) Brevity- Bacon is perfect in choice and arrangement of words. His sentences are short compound formation. The essays themselves are often very short, packing a lost of wisdom in the least possible words. For examples.

(1) A mixture of lie doth always add pleasure (Of Truth)

(2) Revenge is kind of wild justice (Of Revenge)

These sentences have a rare blend of brevity and wisdom, and many of them have culminated into proverbs.

(b) Use of Parallels and Contrasts- Another feature of the aphoristic style is the use of anti-thesis and rhythm. Similar clauses are repeated to make the sentence compact and easy to remember. Contrast is the essence of meaning and Bacon uses this device well. The contrast of light and darkness. truth and lies, revenge and justice, life and death is often used. Some examples are:

(i) All colours will agree in the dark (Of Religion)

(ii) It is a natural to die, as to born (Of Death)

Use of Metaphors and Imagery

Imagery is an Integral part of the aphoristic style. The metaphors and similes to convey his ideas in the least possible words, is the hallmark of this style. Bacon uses images of light, plants, architecture, music and jewels.

Some Interesting Examples are as follows:

(i) All rising to great place is by winding stair (Of Great Places)

(ii) Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, but it will not rise to the price of a diamond. (Of Truth)

Such imagery moves the imagination of the readers, thus making the lines both pithy and sharp.

Middle Style- Addison adopted such type of style. His prose as com pared with what went before it, is nearer to the language of conversation. Yet it is not the informal language of conversation all together. Nor it is the ultra formal language of serious and heavy treatise. Dr. Johnson recommending Addison’s style as the best model for others says, “whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentation, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.”

Addison’s choice of words is also not worthy his writing is free a like from the preponderance of Latin derivatives as from that of Anglo-Saxon slang and colloquialisms. Addison does not avoid homely expression when they suit his purpose, for example, “Our preachers stand stock still,” “He had better have let it alone. “In grave passage- The vision of Mirza or ‘The Reflection in Westminster Abbey” his diction is naturally more ornate. Every where we are impressed with the writer’s easy command of language. Addison is called the social reformer of 18th century.

Lamb’s Prose Style (Autobiographical Style)-According to Hugh Walker, the greatest glory of the London Magazine was “that it found a place for The Prince of English Essayists.” Lamb is “a master of many harmonies.” His style has a distinctive flavour, a special charm of its own. His prose has echoes of great Elizabethan and Jacobean master like Burton and Browne. He has the substance and quality of sublimity. He Love archaic words, self coin ages, alliterations and iterations. His sentences are adorned with allusions, annotations, and Latinisms. Yet his style is never heavy or tiring. The secret of his charm lies in his friendly tone. He takes the reader into confidence and chats with him as with a friend. This blend of a grand style and an informal tone gives his prose a unique finish that has never been equaled. Lamb writes in various moods. There are the moods of reflection and meditation of brooding and pensiveness, of melancholy and sadness, of regret and fear, of an awareness of tears of things and of the tragedy of life, of mirth and merriment. of joy and bliss, of rapture and ecstasy, boisterous, humour and riotous fun, and so on, his style varies in accordance with his changing moods.

His style resembles that of Sir Thomas Browne in reflective essays such as New year’s Eve and Popular Fallacies. It reminds us of Fuller when he writes in a witty vein as in Poor Relation. The results of this is what he calls “a self pleasing quaintness.”

Descriptive and Pictorial Imagery- Some writers use this style. Through description a writer in a literary work presents details of time, place character and social setting and creates the ‘world’ in which the story moves. Hazlitt has the capacity to bring before our minds a scene of nature or a particular place by means of a brief description of it. In the essay entitled The Fight we get a most vivid picture of the exchange of blows between two champions of the ring. In fact, every essay by Hazlitt has a large picturesque element in it.

Pictorial imagery may be seen in the essay of Thomas Carlyle, a Victorian writer. His imagery is highly sensuous, visual, pictorial, vivid and graphics, and it constitutes of one of the chief glories of his style. Here are a few example chosen at random, from his lecture, “on the Hero as poet.”

(i) …..cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire.

(ii) Dante’s painting is not graphic only, brief, true and of a vividness as of fire in dark night.

(iii) Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is beautiful to me.

Conversational Style- An object that give rise to comment because of its unusual and remarkable quality; a group portrait of fashionable persons in a landscape or indoor setting. It is used in literature. Gardiner’s prose style is simple and conversational. His maxims are pithy, his words bubbling with irony. His liberal use of similes and metaphors has echoes of Charles Lamb. He compares a warm smile to a silver spoon’ a south wind, ‘a baron of beef, ‘Sunshine’. He prefers the simple word to the quaint one, showing an Addisonian simplicity and lucidity.

There are style which are used by writers in various ages.