Concept in Definition ABC
Miscellanea / / November 13, 2021
By Florencia Ucha, in May. 2009
It is known by the term prologue to that brief writing that will always be found at the beginning of a extensive literary work, among what is called preliminary documents and which is generally used for him Author of the same to explain to the readers the motivations that led to create it or to highlight some aspects that it considers decisive and relevant at the time of the reading of the piece, although it will also help the latter to orient themselves a bit in reading it, because prologues often offer the reader the keys to the interpretation of the work.
However, these are not the only functions of a prologue and it will not always be the author of the same who writes the prologue in his own hand. but we can cite some other possibilities such as: carry out a literary criticism about the author, present to the public the work of a unknown author, orient the reader about the modifications that a work has undergone, including extensions, deletions, updates, the
theoretical framework used, as gratitude to remember all those who participated and made the work possible and to defend a work and explain its merit.When I pointed out above that sometimes it may happen that the author of a work is not the same as the one who wrote the prologue, it is because, for example. It may be a question of a very new author, little known, then, the resource of a prologue written by a recognized pen that endorses and weighs the work of the new author will be used.
The prologue will never be written before the end of to write the work, but its writing it will be later than this to give rise to what we discussed earlier, because without a finished work, of course, an author would have little to say about it.
Meanwhile, if it is a very successful work that has several editions, it is common that for each reissue a new prologue is prepared, which will surely bring up something of this question of the success.
Although sometimes people tend to confuse them, a prologue differs from a simple one introduction because it lacks the character literary that hold most of the prologues