Contexts of Prose

1. Close reading of prose is useful only as an explication of how the language works in its context.
2. We tend to view poetry as free of context and prose as dependent on context. However, there are limits to this. The context of poetry is typically seen as the history of poetry. The context of prose is dependent on the work's presumed purpose with its cultural genre.
3. Of course, no work of prose has a discreet purpose, unless it is propaganda. And we tend to be suspicious of excessively agenda-driven writing. However, prose works do have a general purpose - e.g. to entertain, to inform, to enlighten, to convince.
4. The more context-dependent prose is, the less likely we are to call it art. This goes back to Immanuel Kant's idea of pure art as separate from politics or personal considerations.
5. Roman Jakobson, the Russian linguist, described all texts as communicative acts: a message from an addresser to an addressee. The message was the text itself (the actual words), but the meaning had to do with the addresser, addressee, the context, cultural factors affecting meaning, etc.