The answer to the question of what prose is, apparently, must be sought in the origins of ancient literature. In the traditional literature of ancient Greece, any literary text was called poetry. In Greek art, the concept of beautiful, artistic, was firmly fused with rhythm. Therefore, most of the works of ancient Greek fiction related to poetry. Later, speech, organized rhythmically, was called "verse", in contrast to non-rhythmic speech. Among the successors and successors of the ancient Greek culture, the ancient Romans, it was called "prose" (prōsa). What is prose in ancient Roman literature? This speech is free, not connected by rhythm and repetition.
It would seem that there is a clear criterion that delimits concepts, but in fact, everything is much more complicated. Prose and poetry do not have clear boundaries. There is frank prose that does not have a rhythm, but is broken into stanzas, like poetry, called the “white verse”. And, on the contrary, rhythmic, rhyming lines, attributed by the author to prose, albeit rhythmic. So what is prose?
Among the works of ancient Greek literature, in addition to poetry, there were prose genres of fiction, such as myth, fairy tale, tradition and comedy. They did not apply to poetry and literature in general, because myth served religion, a fairy tale was a genre of everyday life, and tradition was historical prose, while comedy, which ridiculed base instincts, was related to mundane entertainments. And scientific research works, speeches of speakers and politicians were genres of non-fiction.
We can conclude that in ancient, ancient Roman, and then in European medieval culture, prose was valued below poetry. Prose genres were attributed to everyday or journalistic literature that did not have artistic value. While poetry was rated very highly and was considered an artistic ideal.
In the second half of the Middle Ages, changes in society led to new trends in literature. Gradually, poetry loses its privileged status. In connection with the active development of trade and industry, culture grew and developed, other social strata were more interested in prose and not poetry genres, new forms appeared, such as novels and short stories. With the development of prose, a romance gradually forms. The former favorites, high poetic genres, do not immediately lose their leading position, they give way to it gradually, and still remain in the literature.
In the 19th century, the question of what prose is no longer raised . Prose writers become leading writers; their works are widely known and highly regarded by society. They are prominent figures in the literary process; the public listens to them. In the best prose works, they manage to rise to high generalizations to which only the outstanding creators of odes, tragedies and poems managed to rise to the ascendance of poetry.
At the end of the 20th century, along with art as a whole, literature becomes more complicated. She begins to compete with real life. Its purpose is changing, it ceases to copy life and begins to model reality in its own way, creating a new model of literature. It gets the name "literature of postmodernism."
Traditional literature expanded the reader's understanding of the world and the inner nature of man. Its goal was to have a positive impact on the individual and society, to improve the world and man, to ennoble the soul, to develop aesthetic and ethical qualities.
Modern Russian prose, like all of today's literature, does not set as its goal the cognition and change of the world. In it, tendencies to the game mode of existence of the author are manifested. According to many modern writers, literature, and prose in particular, have lost the right to teach someone life.