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/lit/ - Literature

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11427749 No.11427749 [Reply] [Original]

What's the difference between beautiful prose and purple prose?

>> No.11427758

who it’s written by. if it’s joyce, it’s beautiful; if it’s you, purple.

>> No.11427759

BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP

>> No.11427769

purple prose is excessively ornate and flowery and descriptive
example:
>it was a dark and stormy night
It was a dark night? Really? As opposed to a bright night perhaps?

>> No.11427834

>>11427769
Sure, a. Right night is one with a full moon for example. When it's a new moon and there is cloud cover from storms then it would be much darker. That's a bad example because it has become cliche. It was once great prose.

>> No.11427835

>>11427749
For beautiful prose the style is essential to the substance. For purple prose the style just gets in the way.

>> No.11427840

Beautiful prose is musical and able to evoke shit, because every move is deliberate.
Purple prose is trying to sound beautiful, but the author doesn't understand how to make the words add up to anything, so they just throw shit on the page and hope it passes

>> No.11427842

>>11427749
Purple prose is that picture. If she choked on that pencil and died, it would be beautiful prose

>> No.11427892
File: 21 KB, 500x794, 9780872200807.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11427892

Read Longinus On the Sublime

>> No.11427908

>>11427749
Like others said in this thread, beautiful prose is deliberate and minimal with its stylistic choices. If you cut away any element, it will be lesser for it.

Purple prose, however, has a lot of extraneous and pretentious elements. It's the equivalent of telling someone, "You're trying too hard." This is not saying that you shouldn't try hard, anyone who has been successful knows that hard work is a necessity, just that if the effort seems strained, it'll be off-putting to the reader.

>> No.11427981

>>11427749
I'm no expert, but I'd probably say it's all about context, if your character or third person narration uses resonably complicated language then it's not weird to use more obscure vocabulary. It also depends on the amount of detail, I read Nabokov and it seemed he used obscre words to appropriately describe a detailed picture that would needlessly require more words and would be jarring.

>>11427769
The night in Iceland is very bright.

>> No.11428006

>>11427769
>As opposed to a bright night perhaps?
have you ever been outside? there is a world of difference between a full moon night and a cloudy moonless night.

>> No.11428008

>>11427769
Dark and stormy night is not purple prose. It's tropotypical. Gtfo

>> No.11428196

what's the difference, he asks; here's an example, my god;

PURPLE PROSE: He had felt her sticky kisses once before, all mellow and plump on his orotund lips: kisses that divulged secrets; that indulged in him clandestine, furtive little things, little things on the edge of hearing; they seemed to say, "O semicolonanon (name redacted), I seek to know thee; please thee; be with thee; I seek to know the bottom of thine heart, the passage of thine thoughts, the ways of your mode." Hushed she is; she kisses with sibilant phraseology; my sibyl; my light, my loin; my God, my hushed, quiet, lovely little Lolita; my God, my love; the stars in my night; the constellations in my sky; that sibilant, O, that sibilant round plump mellow yellow....

BEAUTIFUL PROSE: two lovers kiss in the hushed and faded moonlight; they embrace; clasp; take arms; divulging secrets to each other; here and there; ho, hum; they go; they taste; o, yuck, some spittle there; ho, hum; he don juans her, ho; she ophelias him; hum; in a nest of crow-nettles, daisies, eglantine; she wears some garland wreath on her head; on her brow lays a tinsel sylph's diadem; she is in the habit of a coiffeuse frock; jackboots cockspurred; ho hum, more description, ho hum; he's got an alpine hat, ho; and with a sprig of woodbine in his lapel; wearing some sterling silver watch; ho hum, get this over with; and some (buzz, buzz) some dashing watersilk suit; they chant, they buzz; they kiss, they swallow; all droopy woopy dooopy hoopy oooooo

>> No.11428291

>>11428196

it's touching to see how much effort people put into shitposting sometimes

>> No.11428294

>>11427749

Beautiful prose had qt feets

>> No.11428305
File: 203 KB, 349x491, oh no.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11428305

>>11428196
what the FUCK is this?

>> No.11428307

>>11427749
It was in the middle of the night when the incident happened.

V.S

It was in the middle of a dark and stormy night when the tragedy occurred.

What flows better? That's your beautiful prose.

>> No.11428309

>>11427769
lmao

>> No.11428310

>>11427749
when the academic-publishing-journalism-industrial complex decides its beautiful it is beautiful.

>> No.11428319

>>11428291
i know; i know; truly that one guy's post was grand; i'll cheer for him; here's my example, prithee

PURPLE: Nestled in the cedargrove thicket they bounced and frolicked--with their lips (cringe). In the brush and underwoods they knew each other, fondling each and every part of their bodies. He felt her voluptuous sinuous curves. She traced her fingers along his broad chest, his masculine essence. She proceeded to plant little kisses all along the land of his chest; for he was a geographic aberration: he was full, he was beautiful. It was as if the gods of yore had each discussed in some sort of forum, some grand dialectic, about how to shape and mold and actuate the perfect man. And she loved him for it. She ate him up, all goopy sticky woopy...

PURPLE: ho hum, here we go; a trite tale we do embark; a girl and boy in the forest, ho; he's in the hamlet habiliments; his haviour is dejected; he lost his father; he goes to ophelia; they kiss and mold together in some form; ho, and she waits while she waits; hee hee hee; o and with a bungalowshaped house in the prairie; prithee; o, let's see, where was i? hee hee hee; he waits while you wait!; they exchanged little rixy pixy poldy woldy smellow yellow kissies; osculation; mi amor; mi amor; o, o!

>> No.11428325

>>11428319
HO HUM! THE BOTTOM ONE IS BEAUTIFUL! HO HUM! THE BOTTOM ONE IS BEAUTIFUL! A TYPO; ERRATA! ERROR!

(exeunt)

>> No.11428336

>>11428307
The virgin contemporary, sterile prose

Vs

The chad classical, poetic prose

>> No.11428341

>>11428307
ALTERNATIVE: it was in the middle of the night; verily, i do recall; yes, i was out for a snack downstairs; and it was dark, i could see; dark as far as i could tell, prithee; either way, it was a middle of the night; one would say midnight, surely; and yes, i was in my bungalowshaped house; and then an accident occurred

>> No.11428383

>>11428341
oh god, fucking kill me

>> No.11428387

>>11428341
Dude you've been on lit all day go take a break, spend time with your family, chat with a friend, kiss your girlfriend. You're better than this

>> No.11428388

>>11427769
>literally doesn't know what he's talking about

>> No.11428389

>>11428387
it's cute that you assume he has a girlfriend

>> No.11428398

>>11428383
good; go

>>11428387
ha ha ha! girlfriend? girlfriend? woo't thou girlfriend? woo't thou say girlfriend? girlfriend? girlfriend? woo't thou really think girlfriend? this machine, this husk, this sulking pile of flesh? this massy smelly boy? this lovely lugubrious boy? girlfriend? my god; you might as well don on me the question mark poster to your unbelievable abstrusiosities; girlfriend; by jove; if i had a girlfriend, i would never have come here; i'd be right now down in her; down and out; my god, if i had a girlfriend, you wouldn't have seen a wink of me; count it a blessing; my god, i work tomorrow; we'll be fine; we'll go

>> No.11428551
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11428551

>>11428398
>he doesn't have a gf

>> No.11428572

>>11427749
>do i like it?

>> No.11428872

>>11427749
beautiful prose is fruit. it's sweet, but has fiber and minerals that benefit your body and keep it healthy. it has substance.
purple prose is sugar. it's sweet, and comes in large amounts. but that's it.

>> No.11428875

>>11428872
I won't tolerate sugar libel on my literature board

>> No.11428884

>>11427769
Man, are you my high school english teacher? He used to say the absolutely dumbest shit just like you ha ha ha

>> No.11428891

>>11428872
*non-alcoholic fatty liver disease intensifies*

>> No.11428893

>>11427769
Wtf are you retarded?

>> No.11428908

And as I came home on Friday night
As drunk as drunk could be
I saw a head upon the bed
Where my old head should be
Well, I called my wife and I said to her
"Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that head upon the bed
Where my old head should be?"

Ay, you're drunk, you're drunk you silly old fool
Still you cannot see
That's a baby boy that me mother sent to me
Well, it's many a day I've traveled, a hundred miles or more
But a baby boy with his whiskers on, sure, I never saw before

>> No.11429013

>>11428196
lmao anon, good job. well memed.

>> No.11429017

>>11427769
>As opposed to a bright night perhaps?
Yes actually. Simply see the difference between cloudy night/clear night, full-moon/partial-moon, geography, etc.

>> No.11429026

>>11427981
Nabakov is often beautiful, sometimes borderline both, and sometimes purple prose.

>> No.11429078

Purple: Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza's breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra's howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation extenuating his excitement as it smacked its way into every muscle of Eliza's body except for the otherwise central zone.

>> No.11429305

>>11429078
What's the beautiful version of this?

>> No.11429418

Purple Prose: Go fuck yourself, Jason!

Beautiful Prose: Go suck a fuck, Jason!

>> No.11429485

>>11427749
I've always understood purple prose as being overly flowery, and thus complex, but without the mastery that would give its web of metaphors and associations the direction they need. Beautiful prose, in relation to poetic borrowings, is when the sum of all figurative language is a single, complex, well-developed point or a succession of interrelated ideas that actually communicate something instead of being there just to sound good or to conjure a beautiful image.

>> No.11429792

Beautiful prose is written beatifully because it needs to be.

Purple prose is written beautifully because it wants to be.