How to Write English Prose

6 hours ago

David Bentley Hart praises Sir Thomas Browne's prose as a perfect gem of English, particularly citing passages from 'On Dreams' and 'Pseudodoxia Epidemica' that exemplify Browne's range from glowing beauty to flamboyant density.
Hart contrasts Browne's ornate style with the King James Bible's simplicity, arguing both represent a continuum from the beautiful to the sublime in pre-Kantian terms, not a simple opposition.
He claims great prose develops later than poetry, requiring a mature language; English achieved its zenith in the 17th century, enriched by a vast vocabulary mixing Teutonic and Latin elements.
Hart criticizes 20th-century trends toward simplification and minimalism in prose, calling them an 'official dogma' that produces dull, anonymous writing, and advocates for balancing beauty and sublimity.
He lists five exemplary prose writers—Robert Louis Stevenson, Sylvia Townsend Warner, J.A. Baker, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and Vladimir Nabokov—with passages illustrating rich, evocative style.
Hart offers 33 rules for writing, emphasizing precise vocabulary (e.g., 'ultracrepidarian,' 'hyaline,' 'pogonotrophy'), elegance over clarity, and rejecting Orwell's and Strunk & White's simplistic advice.
He champions the semicolon and dash as subtle punctuation tools, advises ignoring unaccomplished critics, and urges writers to aim for posterity, knowing the magic of language to create worlds.
Hart concludes with personal moments of writing satisfaction, emphasizing that achieving one's intended effect makes all hard work worthwhile.

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How to Write English Prose