Prose Styles: Five Primary TypesUniversity of Minnesota Press, 1966 - 149 pages Prose Styles was first published in 1966.How can one distinguish in any text between features answering to the timeless function of its type and those accountable to passing tendencies of periods, fashions, schools, and individual writers? This study is addressed to that general question, and, while it is not a writer's manual in any sense, it should prove enlightening and helpful to anyone with a genuine interest in style.The author identifies, with concreteness as to detail and illustration, the styles of five broad types of non-metrical communication in spoken or written discourse that have been conspicuous in the culture or life of the western world from remote times. He names these styles the deliberative, the expository, the tumbling, the prophetic, and the indenture. In discussing each, he explains how each set of features is the virtually inevitable articulation of the purpose of a type of transaction the conditions of which have remained constant from age to age. He demonstrates, for example, that there are striking elementary affinities between such otherwise dissimilar works as the Sermon on the Mount and Lamb's "Dissertation upon Roast Pig," or between Beowulf and a modern-day newspaper sports column.Dudley Fitts comments: "This is a popular book for the literate public: no 'easy, ' not 'superficial, ' but clearly not recondite."The book will be especially interesting to professional writers, as well as to students and teachers of literature.This is Volume 1, Minnesota Monographs in the Humanities, of which Gerhard H. Weiss is the series editor. |
Contents
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS The Terms Prose | 3 |
THE DELIBERATIVE STYLE The Style of Persuasion | 18 |
THE EXPOSITORY STYLE Treatise Lesson Sermon | 39 |
Copyright | |
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alliteration ancient appear argument authority beginning called century chapter character Cicero classical common concerned course court deliberative discourse documents early effect Elizabethan eloquence English example expression fact force formal give given Greek hand idea implies influence interesting John kind known language later Latin least less letter literature living London look manner matter means mind narrative nature notice oration oratory original passage passing person philosophers phrase pieces poetry present Press principle prophet prose quoted reader reason reference remarks rhetoric Roman rule seems seen sense sentence single speak speaker speech stand standard statutes Stoic story style taken thing thought tion tradition truth tumbling types typical University verse whole writer written York