Emotive prose

The substyle of emotive prose has the common features as have reen pointed out for the belles-lettres style in general; but all this featrures are correlated differently in emotive prose.

The language of the writer conforms or is expected to conform to the ‘literary norms of the given period in the development of the English literary language.The language of the hero of a novel, of a story will in the main be chosen in order to characterise the man himself. True, this language is also subjected to some kind of reshaping. This is indispensable requirement of any literary work. Those writers who neglect this requirement may unduly contaminate the literary language by flooding the of their characters with non-literary elements, thus overdoing the otherwise very advantageous device of depicting a hero through his speech.

Emotive prose allows the use of elements from other styles as well. Thus we find elements of the newspaper style (see,for example, Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here”); theofficial style (see, for example,the business letters exchanged between two characters in Galsworthy’s novel “The Cidatel where medical language is used).

But all these styles under influence of emotive prose undegro a kind of transformation. A style of language that is made use of in prose is diluted by the general features of the belles-lettres style which subjects it to its own purposes.Passages written in other styles may be viewed only as interpolations and not as constituents of the style.

Emotive prose as a separate form of imaginative literature, that is fiction, came into being rather late in the historyof the English literary language. It is well known that is early Anglo-Saxon literature there was no emotive prose. Anglo-Saxon literature was mainly poetry, songs of a religious, military and festive character. The first emotive which appeared was translations from Latin of stories from the Bible and the Lives of the Saints.

Middle English prose literature was also educational, represented mostly by translations of religious works from Latin. In the 11th and 12th centuries as a result of the Norman conquest, Anglo-saxon literature fell into a decline. Almost all that was written in French or in Latin. In the 12th and 13th centuries, however, there appeared the “Tales of King Arthur and his Round Table”, some of which were written in verse and others in prose. They were imitations of French models. In the 14th century there was an event which played an important role not only in the development of general standard English, but in hte development of the peculiarities of emotive prose. This was the translation of Bible made by Wyclif and his disciples.

In as much as this literary work has had rather a notable effect on the subsquent development of emotive prose (Lyly is called the pioneer of the english novel), it will not come amiss to give a sample of the prose of «Euphues»:

«The merchant that travialeth for gain, the husbandman that toileth for increase, the lawyer that pleadeth for gold, the craftsman that seeketh to live by his labour, all these, after they have fatted themselves with sufficient, either take their ease or less pain than they were accustomed. Hippomene ceased to run when he had gotten the gole, Herculess to labour when he had obtained the victory, Mercury to pipe when he had cast Argus in a slumber. Every action has his end; and then we leave to sweat when we have found the sweet. The ant, though she toil in summer, yet in winter she leaves to travail. The bee, though she delight to suck the fair flower, yet is she at last cloyed with honey. The spider that weaveth the finest thread ceseth at the last, when she hath finishrd her web.

This passage shows the prolixity of what came the euphuistic style with its illustrations built on semanic parallelism and the much-favoured devise of mythological allusions; with its carefully chosen vocabulary, its refinement and grase.

Euphuism bred a liking for excessive embellishment, and this in its turn, called forth an unrestrained use of rhetorical devices unmotivated by the content and unjustified by the purport of the communication.

Euphuism, however, had merits in its time.It made man-of-letters took for finer,more elegant forms of expression and this search inevitably made them more form-concious they learned to polish their language and, to some extent,developed a feeling for prose rhythm. But at later periods euphuism became reactionary,in as much as it barred all kinds of lively colloquial words and expressions and hindered the process of liberating the belles-lettres style from rigid poetical restrictions.The democratization of the means of expression was incompatible with the aristocratic artificiality and pretiness of euphuism.

A great influence on the further development of the characteristic features of the belles-lettres style was exercised by Shakespear.

«Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-pil’d hyperboles, spruce affectation:

Figures pedantical, these summer flies

Have blown me full of maggot ostentation:

I do forswear them...»

The influence of the Bible on English emotive prose is particulary striking in the works of John Bunyan. «The Pilgrems Progress» represents a new trend in the developement of emotive prose. Here is an excerpt from the work:

«Now Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence;

so when he was gone tp bed, he told that he had done, to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon, for trespassimg on his grounds.Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them.So she asked what they were, when they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy....The next night she talked with her husband about them further, and understanding that they were yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make away with themselves.

In this expert the main peculiarities of the style of emotive prose of the puritan trend stand out clearly. Simplicity in choise of words and in syntax is the predominant feature of the language of this type of emotive prose. The speech of the characters is mainly shaped in the form of indirect discours.

So there is a kind of mixture of two substyles, emotive prose and drama. However, when incursions of direct speech are short, they are given within the author’s narrative, for example, «...their only way would be forhwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison: for why, said he, should you choose life, seeing it is attendant with so much bitternes? But they desired him to let them go...»

The puritan influence on the language of emotive prose at this time displays what may be called an anti-renaissance spirit. This is shown in the disparagement of mythological imagery and any embellishment of language whatever.

The struggle between the two opposing tendencies in rendering ideas in the style of emotive prose reflects the political and religious strife between the Puritans and the Cavaliers, the name given to those who were on the side of Charles I against the Puritan Party durimg the Civil War of 1642—1652.

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