Purple prose
Encyclopedia
Purple prose is a term of literary criticism
used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose
so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers to writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment
or pathos
in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response.
When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages; these are often noted as standing out from the rest of the work.
The term purple patch is also used in a more general, and more unequivocally positive, sense to refer to a period of outstanding achievement. This usage is particularly common in sporting contexts in some countries; for example, a footballer
who had scored in six successive games might be said to be "enjoying a purple patch".
(Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65–8 BCE) who wrote in his Ars Poetica
(lines 14-21):
Purpureus meant lustrous or dazzling in Horace's Latin.
by Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), first published in 1658:
A more recent author famous for purple prose is Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
(1803–73), who begins his novel Paul Clifford
(1830) with the sentence:
Often shortened to just "It was a dark and stormy night
", this opening has given rise to the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
, in which contestants are asked to supply similarly florid opening sentences to their own otherwise imaginary novels. (While the preceding sentence is often mocked as an example of purple prose, it is probably more correctly labeled an example of a clumsy digression. Note that removing the parenthetical reference to London mostly repairs the damage.)
Other instances of purple prose quoted from the novel include "As soon as the Promethean spark had been fully communicated to the lady's tube" (meaning Once the lady lit her pipe), "a nectarian beverage" (wine), "a somnambular accommodation" (a bedroom), and so on.
John Ruskin
prefaced his contrast of the Mediterranean with the Northern (Gothic) landscape, architecture, and character in "The Nature of Gothic" with an imaginary stratospheric flight, seeing:
Modern instances of purple prose can often be found in romance novels. These started alluding to sex in the 1970s
, and authors, not wanting to be either pornographic or clinical in their descriptions, developed many euphemisms to describe body parts and sexual activity. Examples include "throbbing manhood", "quivering desire", "[he] filled her with the hot wet tumult of his love", and the much-parodied "explode with delight".
Romance
writers are aware of the problem, with Deb Stover contributing an essay "The Purple Prose Eater" to the book How to Write a Romance For The New Markets (1999).
genres have become infamous for excesses of purple prose, including romance, mystery, and adventure; likewise, in journalism, the term is often used to refer to writing that places tone and emotional heft over factual reporting.
A few writers in these genre
s have adopted the term as a badge of pride: a fanzine
called Purple Prose was devoted to the documenting of purple prose in the pulps; the Purple Prose Press was a publisher (now defunct) which specialized in re-printing material from the pulps; and for a time there was an online magazine
called, simply, PurpleProse.
When referring to writing published on the Internet, e.g., fanfiction, this phrase is sometimes written as "urple prose," with the misspelling satirizing the simple spelling errors present in much of Internet fanfiction. "Urple" can also be a reference to vomiting
, a possible reaction to reading extremely purple prose.
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers to writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment
Sentiment
Sentiment can refer to activity of five material senses mistaking them as transcendental:*Feelings and emotions...
or pathos
Pathos
Pathos represents an appeal to the audience's emotions. Pathos is a communication technique used most often in rhetoric , and in literature, film and other narrative art....
in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response.
When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages; these are often noted as standing out from the rest of the work.
The term purple patch is also used in a more general, and more unequivocally positive, sense to refer to a period of outstanding achievement. This usage is particularly common in sporting contexts in some countries; for example, a footballer
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
who had scored in six successive games might be said to be "enjoying a purple patch".
Origins
The term "purple prose" is derived from a reference by the Roman poet HoraceHorace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
(Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65–8 BCE) who wrote in his Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica is a term meaning "The Art of Poetry" or "On the Nature of Poetry". Early examples of Ars Poetica by Aristotle and Horace have survived and have since spawned many other poems that bear the same name...
(lines 14-21):
Inceptis grauibus plerumque et magna professis
purpureus, late qui splendeat, unus et alter
adsuitur pannus, cum lucus et ara Dianae
et properantis aquae per amoenos ambitus agros
aut flumen Rhenum aut pluuius describitur arcus;
sed nunc non erat his locus. Et fortasse cupressum
scis simulare; quid hoc, si fractis enatat exspes
nauibus, aere dato qui pingitur?"Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy
purple patches; as when describing
a sacred grove, or the altar of DianaDiana (mythology)In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
,
or a stream meandering through fields,
or the river Rhine, or a rainbow;
but this was not the place for them. If you can realistically render
a cypress tree, would you include one when commissioned to paint
a sailor in the midst of a shipwreck?"
Purpureus meant lustrous or dazzling in Horace's Latin.
Examples
A frequently cited example of purple prose is the penultimate paragraph of The Garden of CyrusThe Garden of Cyrus
The Garden of Cyrus or The Quincunciall Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, naturally, artificially, mystically considered is a Discourse written by Sir Thomas Browne. It was first published in 1658, along with its diptych companion, Urn-Burial...
by Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), first published in 1658:
- But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations; making Cables of Cobwebs and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Besides Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the Ghost of a Rose.
A more recent author famous for purple prose is Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...
(1803–73), who begins his novel Paul Clifford
Paul Clifford
Paul Clifford is a novel published in 1830 by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It tells the life of Paul Clifford, a man who leads a dual life as both a criminal and an upscale gentleman...
(1830) with the sentence:
- It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
Often shortened to just "It was a dark and stormy night
It was a dark and stormy night
"It was a dark and stormy night" is an infamous phrase written by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford. The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest uses the phrase as a signifier of purple prose...
", this opening has given rise to the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a tongue-in-cheek contest that takes place annually and is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" – that is,...
, in which contestants are asked to supply similarly florid opening sentences to their own otherwise imaginary novels. (While the preceding sentence is often mocked as an example of purple prose, it is probably more correctly labeled an example of a clumsy digression. Note that removing the parenthetical reference to London mostly repairs the damage.)
Other instances of purple prose quoted from the novel include "As soon as the Promethean spark had been fully communicated to the lady's tube" (meaning Once the lady lit her pipe), "a nectarian beverage" (wine), "a somnambular accommodation" (a bedroom), and so on.
John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
prefaced his contrast of the Mediterranean with the Northern (Gothic) landscape, architecture, and character in "The Nature of Gothic" with an imaginary stratospheric flight, seeing:
- Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change, is gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands. (The Stones of VeniceThe Stones of Venice (book)The Stones of Venice is a three-volume treatise on Venetian art and architecture by English art historian John Ruskin, first published from 1851 to 1853. Intending to prove how the architecture in Venice exemplified the principles he discussed in his earlier work, The Seven Lamps of Architecture,...
)
Modern instances of purple prose can often be found in romance novels. These started alluding to sex in the 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
, and authors, not wanting to be either pornographic or clinical in their descriptions, developed many euphemisms to describe body parts and sexual activity. Examples include "throbbing manhood", "quivering desire", "[he] filled her with the hot wet tumult of his love", and the much-parodied "explode with delight".
Romance
Romance novel
The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
writers are aware of the problem, with Deb Stover contributing an essay "The Purple Prose Eater" to the book How to Write a Romance For The New Markets (1999).
Modern usage
Modern critics use "purple prose" to refer to any writing that is undermined by its over-stylized and formulaic nature. Many pulpPulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
genres have become infamous for excesses of purple prose, including romance, mystery, and adventure; likewise, in journalism, the term is often used to refer to writing that places tone and emotional heft over factual reporting.
A few writers in these genre
Genre
Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...
s have adopted the term as a badge of pride: a fanzine
Fanzine
A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest...
called Purple Prose was devoted to the documenting of purple prose in the pulps; the Purple Prose Press was a publisher (now defunct) which specialized in re-printing material from the pulps; and for a time there was an online magazine
Online magazine
An online magazine shares some features with a blog and also with online newspapers, but can usually be distinguished by its approach to editorial control...
called, simply, PurpleProse.
When referring to writing published on the Internet, e.g., fanfiction, this phrase is sometimes written as "urple prose," with the misspelling satirizing the simple spelling errors present in much of Internet fanfiction. "Urple" can also be a reference to vomiting
Vomiting
Vomiting is the forceful expulsion of the contents of one's stomach through the mouth and sometimes the nose...
, a possible reaction to reading extremely purple prose.
See also
- Bad Sex in Fiction Award
- Bulwer-Lytton Fiction ContestBulwer-Lytton Fiction ContestThe Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a tongue-in-cheek contest that takes place annually and is sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University in San Jose, California. Entrants are invited "to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels" – that is,...
- DescriptionDescriptionDescription is one of four rhetorical modes , along with exposition, argumentation, and narration. Each of the rhetorical modes is present in a variety of forms and each has its own purpose and conventions....
- Order of the Occult HandOrder of the Occult HandThe Order of the Occult Hand is a whimsical secret society of American journalists who have been able to slip the meaningless and telltale phrase "It was as if an occult hand had…" in print as a sort of a game and inside joke.-History:...
External links
- The Purple Prose Eater by Deb Stover.
- The website of the PurpleProse e-zine.
- Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
- Homepage of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.