Originally the word 'Fiction' came from the Latin word 'Fictus.' Fiction, along with non-fiction, is one of two specific branches of literature. It's a story that is trying to be bigger than the story itself. To do this, literary fiction must comment on something that is deemed important, such as social or political issues or the human condition. The primary difference between genre fiction and literary fiction is their emphasis on plot. Although genre fiction is plot-driven, literary fiction is less about its plot and more about its commentary interest. A great way to look at the difference is to remember that genre fiction is trying to help you escape from reality. Whereas literary fiction attempts to open you up to your reality. Fiction consists of stories, novels, and dramas made up of fictional characters and events, yet events in fiction may be similar to real events. Fiction is any form of a narrative invented by an author's fictional situation. Fiction should not be based on facts or history. Examples of types of fiction (Mysteries, Science fiction, Romance, Crime thrillers, and Fantasy ), and examples of popular fiction as (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Pride, and Prejudice by Jane Austen, To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee).
Prose fiction: is any creative, imaginary writing written in sentences and paragraphs.
Elements of prose fiction
Character: A character is an imagined person in a story, whom we know from the words. The plot shows character, character causes plot.
Irony: is a contrast between expectations for a situation and what is reality.
Plot: The sequence of incidents or events an author builds a story through. It is not merely the action itself but how the author arranges the action for a specific purpose.
Point of view: Is the perspective of events that tells us the thoughts or emotions of the people in a situation
Setting: is the time and place in which the story takes place.
Theme: Is defined as the main idea or the underlying sense of a literary work that can be explicitly or indirectly specified.
Symbolism: Is the use of symbols to represent ideas and values, by giving symbolic meanings which vary from their literal meaning.
Tone: The tone of a literary work expresses the attitude of the writer towards the subject matter and audience or his feelings about it.
Fairy tales: A fairy tale is a children's story featuring fictional beings in an enchanted world that involves fairies, dwarfs, goblins, angels, trolls, and speaking animals. The term 'fairy' tale appears to refer more to a story 's fantastic and magical setting or magical influences than to the presence of a fairy character within that story.
Fairy tales are perfect opportunities to educate children about the development of myths, dispute solving, the creation of personalities, heroes, and villains and overall expand their creativity. It lets them differentiate fiction from non-fiction stories. In this semester we studied four fairy tales which are ( The Beauty & the Beast, The Light Princess by George Macdonald, The Appointment of Samarra, Aesop), as a result, a study is required, by reading these four fairy tales we should be able to detect elements of prose fiction and be able to identify each of them well. And detect the basics of a useful concept that will help us make decisions and face danger alone. These fairy tales will also help us growing up mentally and teaches us morals to be able to deal with life.
Novels were the most popular types of prose literature in the eighteenth century specifically, they are among the oldest texts in literary history example: Lliad and the Odysset (c.131-19BC), Virgil’s (70-19BC), then comes the more developed epics as Dante Alighieri’s (1265-1321) , then comes the early modern epics as Edmund Spense’s (c. 1552-99), Farie Queene (1590;1596), Most traditional epics are centered around a hero who has to perform several nationally important tasks in a multiplicity of episodes. In particular, classical epics reflect a self-contained worldview of their specific periods and nationalities through their roots in myth, history, and religion. With the erasure of a unified Weltanschauung in the early modern times, the epic 's position weakened, and it was eventually replaced by the novel, the mouthpiece of relativism that emerged in all aspects of cultural discourse. Although the scope of the traditional epic is usually wide, the romance condenses the action and orients the plot towards a specific goal. The individualisation of the protagonist, the deliberate perspective and, above all, the linear plot structure, oriented towards a specific climax that no longer focuses on national or cosmic issues, Among the crucial characteristics which distinguish between romance and epic poetry. But at the same time Cervantes is initiating a new and modified epic tradition.
The newly established novel is often characterized by the terms realism and individualism, thus summing up some of this new medium 's basic innovations. While a cosmic and allegorical dimension exhibited by the traditional epic, the modern novel distinguishes itself by grounding the plot in a distinct historical and geographical reality. The allegorical and typical epic hero, with individual and realistic character traits, metamorphoses into the novel's protagonist. These features of the novel, which reflect basic eighteenth-century socio-historical tendencies in their attention to individualism and realism, soon turned the novel into a dominant literary genre. The novel thus mirrors the contemporary disregard for the Middle Age collective spirit that relied heavily on allegory and symbolism. The rise of an educated middle class, the spread of the printing press, and a modified economic basis that enabled authors to pursue writing as an independent profession underpin these major shifts in literary production in the 18th century.