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Book Synopsis

The varying patterns in the development of English prose from the discursiveness of the fourteenth century to the directness of the twentieth are outlined in this book. The author points out that prose has always developed more slowly and uncertainly than poetry; it has often been hampered, for instance, by a notion that it was different from conversation, more elaborate and deliberate. One of the first and greatest difficulties in the development of English prose style was to create and build a language with its own rhythms against the influence of Norman French and Latin. As he traces the course of English prose history, the author quotes for example an analysis from Sidney, Lyly, Bacon, Hooker, Bunyan, Hobbes, Dryden, Defoe, Meredith, James, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and others.

On English Prose

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    A Paperback by James R. Sutherland


      View other formats and editions of On English Prose by James R. Sutherland

      Publisher: University of Toronto Press
      Publication Date: 15/12/1957
      ISBN13: 9781487585495, 978-1487585495
      ISBN10:
      Also in:
      Language: reference and general

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      The varying patterns in the development of English prose from the discursiveness of the fourteenth century to the directness of the twentieth are outlined in this book. The author points out that prose has always developed more slowly and uncertainly than poetry; it has often been hampered, for instance, by a notion that it was different from conversation, more elaborate and deliberate. One of the first and greatest difficulties in the development of English prose style was to create and build a language with its own rhythms against the influence of Norman French and Latin. As he traces the course of English prose history, the author quotes for example an analysis from Sidney, Lyly, Bacon, Hooker, Bunyan, Hobbes, Dryden, Defoe, Meredith, James, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and others.

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