Purple prose

Purple prose is a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context. It also refers to writing that employs certain rhetorical effects such as exaggerated sentiment or pathos in an attempt to manipulate a reader's response.

When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages; these are often noted as standing out from the rest of the work.

The term purple patch is also used in a more general, and more unequivocally positive, sense to refer to a period of outstanding achievement. This usage is particularly common in sporting contexts in some countries; for example, a footballer who had scored in six successive games might be said to be "enjoying a purple patch".

Origins
The term "purple prose" is derived from a reference by the Roman poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65–8 BCE) who wrote in his Ars Poetica (lines 14-21):



Purpureus meant lustrous or dazzling in Horace's Latin.

Examples
A frequently cited example of purple prose is the penultimate paragraph of The Garden of Cyrus by Sir Thomas Browne (1605–82), first published in 1658:


 * But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which often continueth precogitations; making Cables of Cobwebs and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Besides Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise itself. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dullness of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the Ghost of a Rose.

A more recent author famous for purple prose is Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73), who begins his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the sentence:


 * It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents&mdash;except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Often shortened to just "It was a dark and stormy night", this opening has given rise to the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, in which contestants are asked to supply similarly florid opening sentences to their own otherwise imaginary novels. (While the preceding sentence is often mocked as an example of purple prose, it is probably more correctly labeled an example of a clumsy digression. Note that removing the parenthetical reference to London mostly repairs the damage.)

Other instances of purple prose quoted from the novel include "As soon as the Promethean spark had been fully communicated to the lady's tube" (meaning Once the lady lit her pipe), "a nectarian beverage" (wine), "a somnambular accommodation" (a bedroom), and so on.

John Ruskin prefaced his contrast of the Mediterranean with the Northern (Gothic) landscape, architecture, and character in "The Nature of Gothic" with an imaginary stratospheric flight, seeing:


 * Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand. Then let us pass farther towards the north, until we see the orient colours change, is gradually into a vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of Switzerland, and poplar valleys of France, and dark forests of the Danube and Carpathians stretch from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen through clefts in grey swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks, spreading low along the pasture lands. (The Stones of Venice)

Modern instances of purple prose can often be found in romance novels. These started alluding to sex in the 1970s, and authors, not wanting to be either pornographic or clinical in their descriptions, developed many euphemisms to describe body parts and sexual activity. Examples include "throbbing manhood", "quivering desire", "[he] filled her with the hot wet tumult of his love", and the much-parodied "explode with delight".

Romance writers are aware of the problem, with Deb Stover contributing an essay "The Purple Prose Eater" to the book How to Write a Romance For The New Markets (1999).

Modern usage
Modern critics use "purple prose" to refer to any writing that is undermined by its over-stylized and formulaic nature. Many pulp genres have become infamous for excesses of purple prose, including romance, mystery, and adventure; likewise, in journalism, the term is often used to refer to writing that places tone and emotional heft over factual reporting.

A few writers in these genres have adopted the term as a badge of pride: a fanzine called Purple Prose was devoted to the documenting of purple prose in the pulps; the Purple Prose Press was a publisher (now defunct) which specialized in re-printing material from the pulps; and for a time there was an online magazine called, simply, PurpleProse.

When referring to writing published on the Internet, e.g., fanfiction, this phrase is sometimes written as "urple prose," with the misspelling satirizing the simple spelling errors present in much of Internet fanfiction. "Urple" can also be a reference to vomiting, a possible reaction to reading extremely purple prose.

Writers such as Cormac McCarthy, Gavin Paul Carter, Arundhati Roy, Thomas Pynchon, and Jonathan Safran Foer, have found themselves criticized in modern times for overwriting, despite some being praised for their writing styles.