Unit 4 - Non-Fictional Prose
UGC NET English Paper 2 Complete Study Material
📚 This comprehensive unit covers the development of non-fictional prose from Renaissance to contemporary periods, including major essayists, critics, biographers, rhetorical techniques, and analytical methods essential for UGC NET English Paper 2 preparation.
Essays (Bacon, Montaigne), Religious prose (Tyndale, Hooker), Character writing (Overbury), Travel writing (Hakluyt), and Scientific prose (Browne).
"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man." - Bacon
Key Concepts: Aphoristic style, The essay form, Reformation prose, Humanist discourse
Study Renaissance ProsePeriodical essays (Addison & Steele), Satirical prose (Swift), Biographical writing (Johnson), Philosophical prose (Hume), and Political writing (Burke).
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." - Johnson
Key Concepts: The Spectator style, Irony as device, The Rambler essays, Enlightenment rhetoric
Master 18th Century ProseLiterary criticism (Coleridge, Hazlitt), Familiar essays (Lamb), Political prose (Paine, Wollstonecraft), and Nature writing (Gilpin).
"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility." - Wordsworth
Key Concepts: Organic form, The familiar essay, Revolutionary rhetoric, Sublime in prose
Explore Romantic ProseSocial criticism (Carlyle, Ruskin), Aesthetic criticism (Pater), Scientific prose (Darwin, Huxley), Feminist prose (Nightingale, Mill), and Historiography (Macaulay).
"All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." - Pater
Key Concepts: Sage writing, The Oxford movement, Utilitarian prose, Condition-of-England
Study Victorian ProseLiterary criticism (Eliot, Leavis), Cultural criticism (Orwell, Woolf), Philosophical prose (Russell), and Autobiographical prose (Gandhi).
"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." - Woolf
Key Concepts: Impersonal theory, Practical criticism, Polemical writing, Stream-of-consciousness essays
Analyze Modernist ProsePostcolonial essays (Naipaul, Said), Feminist criticism (Showalter, Spivak), Cultural studies (Eagleton), and Travel writing (Theroux).
"The East is a career." - Disraeli (quoted by Said)
Key Concepts: Orientalism, Gynocriticism, New Historicism, Postmodern fragmentation
Explore Contemporary ProseNationalist writing (Nehru, Tagore), Autobiographical prose (Gandhi), Literary criticism (Narayan, Raja Rao), and Contemporary essays (Tharoor, Roy).
"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny..." - Nehru
Key Concepts: Nation and narration, Colonial discourse, Indian aesthetic, Hybrid identity
Study Indian ProseClassical rhetoric (Aristotle), Renaissance rhetoric (Puttenham), 18th century eloquence (Blair), and Modern rhetoric (Burke).
"Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion." - Aristotle
Key Concepts: Ethos/Pathos/Logos, Five canons, Tropes and schemes, Dramatism
Learn Rhetorical TheoryStyle analysis, Voice and tone, Argument structure, Figurative language, Persuasive devices, and Genre conventions.
"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - Augustine
Key Concepts: Periodic vs loose sentences, Irony, Allusion, Parallelism
Master Prose TechniquesHistorical criticism, Reader-response theory, Discourse analysis, New Criticism, and Deconstructive reading.
"The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture." - Barthes
Key Concepts: Intentional fallacy, Affective fallacy, Intertextuality, Textual analysis
Explore Prose CriticismProse Analysis Practice
Identify the Rhetorical Device
"We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
Match the Author to the Work
Prose Period Identification
Which literary period does this excerpt represent?
"The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, a being darkly wise and rudely great..."
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