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History of Belles Letters Style
In Old English there was no emotive prose. It mainly consisted of songs of religious, military and festive character, ballads and later poetry.
The first works of emotive prose were translation from Latin of stories from the Bible and lives of the Saints.
Middle English prose represented translations of religious works from Latin and works of educational character.
In the 11-12th centuries, during the Norman Conquest, Anglo-Saxon literature came into decline. Almost everything was written in Latin and French. However in the 12-13th centuries there appeared the tales of the “Tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table”. Some of which were written in verse, some in prose, but they still imitated French morals.
English prose began to establish itself as an independent substyle only in the 2nd half of the 15th century romances and chronicles describing the life and adventures of semi-legendary Knights and Kings began to appear. One of most notable of these was Malore’s romance “Death of King Arthur”. But it was retold from French Nevertheless it was a work of great historical literary and stylistic interest because dialog was introduced in English literature for the first time. Since then dialog becomes an organic part of literature. True, Malore’s dialogs lacked some important features of living colloquial speech: elliptical, fragmentary, non-finished sentences, etc. Still his book is a historical landmark in establishing the principles of English prose.
With the end of the Norman rule one may see a great advance in all spheres of English social life.
In the 16th century English prose progressed rapidly. Numerous translations from Latin and Greek helped to work out stylistic norms for emotive prose of that period. Modern languages: Italian and French also began to influence the stylistic norms of English prose. The 16 century outstanding literary professionals were: Thomas Moore “Utopia”, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Hash and John Lily “Eupheus” (the novel gave rise to euphemisms and affected style of court speech and others).
In their works, besides dialogue, of course, one could find a number of SDs: antithesis, parallel constructions, allusions. A great influence on the further development of the belles-letteres style was exercised by W. Shakespeare.
17th century saw a considerable development in English prose and in prose on the whole. The century was an epoch of great political and religious struggles. But some writers were still under the influence of classical languages (Latin, Greek) and constructed long passages following Latin and Greek models.
The most outstanding writers:
Milton (Paradise Lost; “Paradise Regained”)
John Banyan (The Pilgrims Progress)
But what is very important in the 17th century literature is that it began to introduce into writing common words and phrases known colloquialisms. True, in the 17th century English prose these elements were yet few. But the tendency broke the eyes and colloquial words began to trickle into English prose.
Belles Letteres Style
Emotive prose
18th century Emotive prose showed steady development of the new tendency of the previous century (common words in writing).
This tendency can justly be called realistic. The motto of it was “call a spade a spade”. By this phrase the adherents of the realistic trend in literature, and in emotive prose is particular, expressed the idea that all things should be called by their right names, that the writers should use plain, blunt words. This was a kind of protest against the complicated and elaborate periphrases by which the most common concepts were often described at that time.
The history of English literature gives their due to such prominent writers as Defoe, Swift and Fielding who created fascinated novels, most of which are still considered masterpieces. The aim of this new school of writing was to make the language clear, precise, well-balanced, and moderate. They developed a manner of writing which by its strength, simplicity directness was admirably adapted to ordinary every-day needs.
Still the general philosophical and aesthetic views dominating at this period greatly influence the manner of writing.
The writers of the 18th century did much to establish emotive prose as an independent form of literary art, as a self-sufficient branch of belles letters style.
The manner in which emotive prose used language means and SDs in some cases resembled the manner of poetic style. At that time it was also difficult to tell a piece of emotive prose from an essay or even from scientific prose, because the most essential and characteristic features of these styles were not yet fully shaped.
Only by the end of the 18th century, the most typical features of emotive prose became really prominent. Laurence Sterne with his “Tristram Shandy” contributed greatly to this process. In this work we can see rudimentary forms of represented speech, the speech of characters approaches the norms of spoken language; the narrative itself begins to reflect the individuality of the author, especially in his manner of using particular language means of his time. The great realistic writers of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century followed this trend.
The 19th century emotive prose can already be regarded as a substyle of the belles –letteres style, complete in its most fundamental properties.
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