American Literature

Prose in literature usually refers to ordinary form of spoken and written language such as novels, short stories, essays etc. As opposed to poetry the unit in prose is sentence and not line. Prose is derived from the Latin word Prosa which means in phrase, which was from the phrase prosa oratio that refers to straightforward or unadorned speech. (Bercovitch  Patell, 2005)

During the period of the First and Second World Wars works of literature were referred to as Modernist literature. The period before modernism was the Victoria era that was characterized by certainty, conservatism and objective truth. These attitudes greatly influenced the modernism era. (Bercovitch  Patell, 2005)

Ideas of Karl Marx in his political writings together with the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud were also of great importance to the modernism movement. It is also true to say that modernist writers were greatly inspired by movements of impressionism and cubism.

Great modernist writers included Virginia Woolf and the famous American poet, Ezra Pound. Gertrude Stein famous for her line Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is a great writer of this modernism era. (Bercovitch  Patell, 2005)