Romance (genre)
As a
literary genre,
romance refers to a style of heroic
prose and
verse narrative current in
Europe from the
Middle Ages to the
Renaissance.
The term was coined to distinguish popular material in the
vernacular (at first the
Romance languages French,
Portuguese and
Spanish, later
German,
English and others) from scholarly and ecclesiastical literature in
Latin.
The boundaries between the romance and the
chansons de geste of the
troubadours was somewhat fluid. In general, the chansons were the property of professional performers, while the romance was associated more with amateurs and private readers. Nevertheless, a professional poet-performer like
Chrétien de Troyes could turn his hand to composing romances. The distinction between an early verse romance and a chanson de geste is often difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, to make.
Unlike the
novel (
nouvelle romaine or "new romance") and like the
chansons de geste, the romance dealt with traditional themes, above all three thematic cycles of tales, assembled in imagination at a late date as the
Matter of Rome (actually centered on the life and deeds of
Alexander the Great), the
Matter of France (
Charlemagne and
Roland, his principal
paladin) and the
Matter of Britain (the lives and deeds of
King Arthur and the Knights of the
Round Table, within which was incorporated the quest for
Holy Grail). The
Acritic songs (dealing with
Digenis Acritas and his fellow frontiersmen) resemble much the
chanson de geste, though they developed simultaneously but separately.
A related tradition existed in Northern Europe, and comes down to us in the form of epics, such as
Beowulf and the
Nibelungenlied. However, the richest set of Germanic Romantic literature comes from
Scandinavia in the form of the
Fornaldarsagas. The setting is
Scandinavia, but occasionally it moves temporarily to more distant and exotic locations. There are also very often mythological elements, such as
gods,
dwarves, ,
dragons,
giants and
magic swords. The heroes often embark on dangerous quests where they fight the forces of evil, dragons, witchkings, barrow-wights, and rescue fair maidens.
Many or most of the sagas are based on distant historic events and this is evident in cases where there are corroborating sources, such as
Göngu-Hrólfs saga,
Ragnars saga loðbrókar,
Yngvars saga vÃðförla and
Völsunga saga. In the case of
Hervarar saga the names in the
Gothic setting indicate a historic basis, and the latter parts of the saga are still used as a historic source for Swedish history. They often contain very old Germanic matter, such as the
Hervarar saga and the
Völsunga saga which contains poetry about
Sigurd that did not find its way into the
Poetic Edda and which would otherwise have been lost. Other sagas deal with heroes such as
Ragnar Lodbrok,
Starkad,
Orvar-Odd,
Hagbard and Signy.
In the later
medieval and
Renaissance period, the important
European literary trend was to fantastic fiction. Exemplary work, such as the English
Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory (c.1408–1471), and the Spanish
Amadis de Gaula (1508), spawned many imitators, and the genre was popularly well-received, producing such masterpiece of renaissance poetry as
Ludovico Ariosto's
Orlando furioso and
Torquato Tasso's
Gerusalemme Liberata and other 16th century literary works in the romance genre. But in the judgement of many learned readers of the time, the romance was poor literature, inspiring only broken-down ageing and provincial persons such as
Don Quixote, knight of isolated province
La Mancha.
Hudibras also lampoons the faded conventions of chivalrous romance. Romances had been deemed harmful distractions from more substantive or moral works from the high Middle Ages, in works of piety, but by 1600 most readers would agree.
Many medieval romances recount the marvelous
adventures of a chivalrous,
heroic
knight, often of super-human ability, who, abiding chivalry's strict codes of honour and demeanour, fights and defeats monsters and giants, thereby winning favour with a
beautiful but fickle princess. The story of the medieval romance focuses not upon love and sentiment, but upon
adventure; some would call contemporary
comic books and
sci-fi the genre's successors.
Romancers wrote many of their stories in three, thematic cycles: (i) the Arthurian (the lives and deeds of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table); (ii) the Carlovingian (the lives and deeds of Charlemagne, and Roland, his principal paladin); and, (iii) the Alexandrian (the life and deeds of Alexander the Great). In the later
medieval and
Renaissance period, the important
European literary trend was to fantastic fiction. Exemplary work, such as the English
Le Morte d'Arthur (c.1469), by Sir Thomas Malory (c.1408–1471), and the Spanish
AmadÃs of Gaul (1508), spawned many imitators, and the genre was popularly well-received.
Originally, this literature was written in
Old English and
Provençal, later, in French and German—the notable works being
King Horn,
Havelok the Dane; and Amis and Amiloun; later romances were written as prose, e.g.
Le Morte d'Arthur.
Don Quixote (1605, 1615), by
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), is a satirical story of an elderly country gentleman, living in La Mancha province, crazed by reading chivalric romances.
In later romances, particularly those of French origin, there is a marked tendency to emphasize themes of
courtly love, such as faithfulness in adversity. From
ca. 1800 the connotations of "romance" moved from fantastic and eerie, somewhat
Gothic adventure narratives of novelists like
Anne Radcliffe's
The Sicilian Romance (1790) or
The Romance of the Forest (1791) with erotic content to novels centered on the episodic development of a
courtship that ends in marriage. With a female protagonist, during the rise of
Romanticism the depiction of the course of such a courtship within contemporary conventions of
realism, the female equivalent of the "
novel of education", informs much
Romantic fiction.
The starting point of the fornaldarsagas' influence on the creation of the
Fantasy genre is the publication, in
1825, of the most famous Swedish literary work
Frithjof's saga, which was based on the
Friðþjófs saga ins frÅ"kna, and it became an instant success in
England and
Germany. It is said to have been translated twenty-two times into English, twenty times into German, and once at least into every European language, including modern Icelandic in 1866. Their influence on authors, such as
J. R. R. Tolkien,
William Morris and
Poul Anderson and on the subsequent modern fantasy genre is considerable, and can perhaps not be overstated.
Modern usage of
Romance novel denotes a particular erotic style in a highly conventionalized modern genre, and its sub-genres in historical settings, the well-named "
Bodice rippers" produced by teams of authors often writing under joint
pseudonyms.
Despite the popularity of this meaning of Romance, other works are still, occasionally, referred to as romances because of their uses of other elements descended from the medieval romance, or from the Romantic movement: larger-than-life heroes and heroines, drama and adventure, marvels that may become fantastic, themes of honor and loyalty, or fairy-tale-like stories and story settings. Shakespeare's later comedies, such as
The Tempest or
The Winter's Tale are sometimes called his
romances. Modern works may differentiate from love-story as romance into different genres, such as
planetary romance or
Ruritanian romance.
The critic
Northrop Frye in
Anatomy of Criticism (1957) separated some essentials of romance from the Medieval historical vehicles we identify it with, and usefully distinguished Romance as a mode that may be detected as a theme or atmosphere in other fictions. Expanding
Aristotle's
Poetics, Frye classified fictions by the power of the hero's actions, which may be greater than ours, or less, or roughly of the same degree. Thus if the hero is superior in
kind to men, the action is a
myth. If the hero is superior in
degree to others and to his environment, the mode is that of Romance, where the actions are marvellous, but the hero is human. "The hero of romance moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended: prodigies of courage and endurance, unnatural to us, are natural to him, and enchanted weapons, talking animals, terrifying ogres and witches, and talismans of miraculous power violate no rule of probability... Romance divides into two main forms: a secular form dealing with
chivalry and knight-errantry, and a religious form devoted to
legends of saints. Both lean heavily on miraculous violations of natural law for their interest as stories." (Frye pp 33-34) In Romance, the action is never far removed from the forest, and the hero's isolation or death "has the effect of a spirit passing out of nature" Frye perceives, "and evokes a mood best described as
elegiac" There is a sense of fateful inevitability, but the sense of pity and fear that
Tragedy produces, Romance absorbs into emotions that produce pleasure. "It turns fear at a distance, or terror, into the adventurous; fear at contact, or horror, into the marvellous, and fear without an object, or dread (
Angst) into a pensive melancholy." Pity, Frye finds rendered by Romance into the theme of rescue and a languid charmed tenderness.
Medieval examples:
Romance of the RoseSir Gawain and the Green KnightGuillaume de PalermeLe Morte D'Arthur -
Sir Thomas MaloryAmadis de Gaula-
João Lobeira (most likely; see the link to Lobeira's page for more information)
Romance as a fictive mode:
Romance of the Three KingdomsOdyssey: Odysseus and Circe episode
The Tempest
