Enumerate the difference between drama and other forms of literature Literature (from Latin litterae (plural); letter)

is the art of written work, and is not confined to published sources. The word literature literally means "things made from letters" and the pars pro toto term "letters" is sometimes used to signify "literature," as in the figures of speech "arts and letters" and "man of letters." The four major classifications of literature are: o o o o Poetry, Prose, Novel, and Drama

Our topic today is to enumerate the differences between the last one and the former three forms of literature. However before coming to the differences as such, I will talk a bit on each of them briefly. Poetry (from the Greek poiesis with a broad meaning of a "making", seen also in such terms as "hemopoiesis"; more narrowly, the making of poetry) is a form of literary art which uses the aesthetic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning. Poetry is often hard to define, but it can almost always be recognized by its use of intense imagery and figurative language, such as metaphors and similes. Poetic language is very different from prose - it is not the type of language we use in everyday speech. Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism and irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, metaphor, simile and metonymy create a resonance between otherwise disparate imagesa layering of meanings, forming connections previously not

perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm. Some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics of the language being used. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz and Rumimay think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and regular meter; however, there are traditions, such as Biblical poetry, that use other means to create rhythm and euphony. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition playing with and testing, among other things, the principle of euphony itself, sometimes altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm. In today's increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Drama comes from Greek words meaning "to do" or "to act." A play is a story acted out. It shows people going through some eventful period in their lives, seriously or humorously. The speech and action of a play recreate the flow of human life. A play comes fully to life only on the stage. On the stage it combines many arts those of the author, director, actor, designer, and others. Dramatic performance involves an intricate process of rehearsal based upon imagery inherent in the dramatic text. The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The structure of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet (1601) by Shakespeare and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles is among the supreme masterpieces of the art of drama. Drama is a performing art with mainly literary starting-point. The playwright (like the novelist and often the poet as well) uses words to communicate thought and feeling, to create character and action. Proper response to any type of literature depends on an understanding of the authors word in context. Then, too, it is characteristic of an intelligent, informed response to literature to at other elements of the text and to raise pertinent questions. For example, what styles and devices advance the ideas? How does this specific situation fit into the complete action? Why does this character elicit a certain response? Because most greet art is complex, because many parts contribute to

whole effects, a play text should be studied like the text of a novel or the score of a symphony. For critical awareness of all various elements cannot always be achieved the first time one reads or hears a composition. Prose is the most typical form of language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure (as in traditional poetry). While there are critical debates on the construction of prose, its simplicity and loosely defined structure has led to its adoption for the majority of spoken dialogue, factual discourse as well as topical and fictional writing. It is commonly used, for example, in literature, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcasting, films, history, philosophy, law and many other forms of communication. Novels, essays, short stories, and works of criticism are examples of prose. Other examples include: comedy, drama, fable, fiction, folk, tale, and others. Prose lacks the more formal metrical structure of verse that is almost always found in traditional poetry. Poems often involve a meter and/or rhyme scheme. Prose, instead, comprises full, grammatical sentences, which then constitute paragraphs and overlook aesthetic appeal. Some works of prose do contain traces of metrical structure or versification and a conscious blend of the two literature formats is known as prose poetry. Similarly, any work of verse with fewer rules and restrictions is known as free verse. Verse is considered to be more systematic or formulaic, whereas prose is the most reflective of ordinary (often conversational) speech. On this point Samuel Taylor Coleridge requested, jokingly, that novice poets should know the "definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,words in their best order; poetry,the best words in their best order."[1] In Molire's play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Monsieur Jourdain asked for something to be written in neither verse nor prose. A philosophy master replied that "there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse," for the simple reason being that "everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose. A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century. Further

definition of the genre is historically difficult. The construction of the narrative, the plot, the way reality is created in the works of fiction, the fascination of the character study, and the use of language are usually discussed to show a novel's artistic merits. Most of these requirements were introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to give fiction a justification outside the field of factual history. Fictionality and the presentation in a narrative are the two features most commonly invoked to distinguish novels from histories. In a historical perspective they are problematic criteria. Histories were supposed to be narrative projects throughout the early modern period. Their authors could include inventions as long as they were rooted in traditional knowledge or in order to orchestrate a certain passage. Historians would thus invent and compose speeches for didactic purposes. Novels can, on the other hand, depict the social, political, and personal realities of a place and period with a clarity and detail historians would not dare to explore. The line between history and novel is eventually drawn between the debates novelists and historians are supposed to address in the West and wherever the Western pattern of debates has been introduced: Novels are supposed to show qualities of literature and art. Histories are by contrast supposed to be written in order to fuel a public debate over historical responsibilities. A novel can hence deal with history. It will be analyzed, however, with a look at the almost timeless value it is supposed to show in the hands of private readers as a work of art. In the recent years, two seemingly insoluble issues have confronted the scholar interested in particular works of drama. The first is the degree to which one should engage with those features a work of drama might possess because it was written for performance. Call it the constraint problem. The second is whether, because of its peculiar history or nature, drama is a stable literary category at all. Call this the instability problem. The constraint problem is an immediate question concerning the relevant features for an analysis or interpretation. The instability problem is a concern if artistic categories are not just taxonomic but are appealed to in explaining particular works of literature. These issues have a common source, namely, the connections and disconnections between dramatic literature and theatrical performance. So they are not always distinguished.

Drama is also beset with definition problems. First drama cannot be defined as a basic form of literature, as it is sometimes taken to be, distinct from the two other basic literary forms, poetry and prose. To mark the relevant distinctions among basic forms of literature, one must call attention to some aspect of their characteristic used of language. For example, poetry is often thought to be separable from other writing because of its attention to the formal features of words in combination: Rhythm, Alliteration, and Meter in particular.

Likewise, prose is often thought to be separable from poetic writing by being concerned mainly with features of the sense of words, not with their sensible features. Drama too is frequently said to be a separable basic form of literature. However, what marks that distinction is the manner in which its speakers are identified or individuated. Immediately we see this is a comparatively odd term of contrast. The first two modes of contrast are clear enough, even if they only mark relative emphases. However, nothing in poetry or prose, as demarcated above, is clearly contrasted with what is ordinarily taken to be the central mark of dramatic literature: the use of dialogue. Dialogue, even dialogue set out with explicit speech prefixes does not contrast with a concern for either the forms of words or their senses. Second, drama cannot easily be distinguished as a more specific sort of artistic category like genre or literary kind where the comparison class would include lyric poetry, epic, novel, romance, short story, among others. Once again, what must be said about drama to mark the relevant distinctions will be some aspect of its characteristic uses of language. The use of dialogue is not the sort of feature in terms of which we can contrast drama with these other genres or literary kinds. For example, there is no principled reason a lyric poem, even a sonnet cannot be written in dialogue. However, if drama has a literary basis, it also has a distinctive form and special features of its own. It is, after all, literature planned for theatre where the action and dialogue is performed, not narrated, and where actors impersonate characters. It may

be helpful to read a poem aloud to appreciate its meter or rhythm but a poem on the page is not incomplete in the sense that a play is before it has been set and seen on the stage. This further dimension distinguishes drama from other types of literature, for mediating between the author of a play and the audience are all the elements that make up a production- the presence of the actors, setting, properties, costumes, lighting, all shaped by the shared creative acts of the director and company; and, of course, the architecture of the theatre itself. Then, unlike the novelist, the playwright and his interpreters conceive an intense and continuous action. The playgoer, unlike the reader, cannot pause for reflection or re-reading. The impact and meaning must be communicated by whatever is happening on the stage at any particular moment. We must believe in Oedipuss agony, Millamants spirit or Undershafts ideas as they are expressed in action in front of us. The relationship between playwright and performers, the performers themselves and the performers and audience thus makes for greater immediacy and complexity than is found in other forms of literature. It cannot be repeated often enough that a play in performance, the making of a theatrical experience from a text, is the collaborative act of many people and a combination of many arts. So it is not surprising that we can plays from different points of view. As readers, we might refer to Shakespeares Macbeth or Strindbergs Miss Julie. As playgoers, we often speak of Edith Evanss Lady Bracknell or Peter Brooks A Midsummer Nights Dream.