Theory of prose is one of the twentieth century´s most important works of literary theory. It not only anticipates structuralism and poststructuralism, but poses questions about the nature of fictionthat are as provocative today as theywere in the 192os. Arguing that writers structure their materials according to artistic principles rather than from attempts to imitate "reality", shklovsky uses the works of Cervantes, Tolstoi, Sterne, Dickens, and others to give us a new way of thinking about fiction and about the world.