/lit/ - Literature

>>23513719
bait, but
>the written word is often the first and only thing they bring up about any author or work of literature
Do you realize how stupid this sounds? The written word is not just the primary, but in the vast majority of cases, the sole vehicle through which information is delivered to the reader. Of course the way a novel was written should be given a lot of attention when what you're talking about is writing itself. It honestly shocks me how many people genuinely view prose as if its some tertiary element, when the novel would not exist without it. It's not a script, a screenplay, a storyboard, whatever; it's doing 100% of the work. All a novel is is the writing.
>>prose, n.
>1. a. The ordinary form of written or spoken language, without metrical structure; esp. as a species or division of literature. Opposed to poetry, verse, rime, or metre.
>c1386: Chaucer Melib. Prol. 19 “Gladly quod I by goddes sweete pyne I wol yow telle a litel thyng in prose.”
>1667: Milton P.L. i. 16 “Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.”
>1718: Lady M. W. Montagu Let. to Abbé Conti 31 July, “I..will..continue the rest of my account in plain prose.”
>1800: Wordsw. Lyr. Ball. (ed. 2) Pref. note, “Much confusion has been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of Poetry and Prose... The only strict antithesis to Prose is Metre.”
>1833: Coleridge Table-t. 3 July, “The definition of good prose is—proper words in their proper places.”
>1880: M. Arnold Ess. Crit., Stud. Poet. (1888) 39 “The needful qualities for a fit prose are regularity, uniformity, precision, balance.”