Romance (prose fiction)
The type of romance considered here is mainly the genre of novel defined by the novelist Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", in contrast to mainstream novels which realistically depict the state of a society.[1] These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel. Scott's novels are also frequently described as historical romances,[2] and Northrop Frye suggested "the general principle that most 'historical novels' are romances".[3] Scott describes romance as a "kindred term",[4] and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".[5]
See also: Historical novel, Historical romance, Historical fantasy, Historical fiction, and Romance novel
There is second type of romance where the primary focus is on "romance", in the sense of love and marriage. Jane Austen wrote this type of romance. A strong love interest is also found in a very different type of literary fiction romance such as Wuthering Heights[6] and Jane Eyre,[7][8] works that correspond more to Scott's definition of the romance genre than Austen's novels do. Literary fiction, in the book-trade, are novels that are regarded as having literary merit and can employ a variety of subgenres, including the love romance novel, the historical novel, the adventure novel, and scientific romance. Works of nautical fiction can also be romances, as the genre often overlaps with historical romance, adventure fiction, and fantasy stories. The Oxford English Dictionary, suggests that the term "romance", as applied to literary fiction, is "now chiefly archaic and historical," and is now mainly used to refer to genre fiction love romances.
The terms "romance novel" and "historical romance" are ambiguous, because the words "romance", and "romantic", can have different meanings: for example, romance can refer to romantic love, or "the character or quality that makes something appeal strongly to the imagination, and sets it apart from the mundane; an air, feeling, or sense of wonder, mystery, and remoteness from everyday life; redolence or suggestion of, or association with, adventure, heroism, chivalry, etc.; mystique, glamour" (OED). The latter sense is associated with the Romantic movement, as well as to the medieval romance tradition.[9] The gothic novel, and romanticism influenced the development of the modern literary romance. Hugh Walpole's gothic novels combine elements of the medieval romance, which he deemed too fanciful, and the modern novel, which he considered to be too confined to strict realism.[10] Romanticism influenced the romance through its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, and preference for the medieval rather than the classical; its emphasis on extremes of emotion and its reaction against the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment, and associated classical aesthetic values, were also a significant influence.[11]
In addition to Walpole, Scott, and the Brontës other romance writers (as defined by Scott) include E. T. A. Hoffmann, Victor Hugo, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy. In the twentieth century, examples are, Joseph Conrad, John Cowper Powys, and more recently, J. R. R. Tolkien and A. S. Byatt, whose best-selling novel Possession: A Romance won the Booker Prize in 1990.
Though the modern literary romance has its beginnings in the eighteenth century, the genre has a long history that includes the ancient Greek novel and medieval romances.[12]
The American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne described a romance as being radically different from a novel by not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience.[13]
The following are the two main definitions relating to literature found in the Oxford English Dictionary:
And in other words:
As noted above a relationship exists between romance and "fantasy", something which arises in particular because of the relationship between this type of novel and medieval chivalric romances.
The most common fantasy world is one based on medieval Europe, and has been since William Morris used it in his early fantasy works, such as The Well at the World's End.[15] and particularly since the 1954 publication of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Such a world is often called "pseudo-medieval"—particularly when the writer has snatched up random elements from the era, which covered a thousand years and a continent, and thrown them together without consideration for their compatibility, or even introduced ideas not so much based on the medieval era as on romanticized views of it. When these worlds are copied not so much from history as from other fantasy works, there is a heavy tendency to uniformity and lack of realism.[16] The full width and breadth of the medieval era is seldom drawn upon. Governments, for instance, tend to be uncompromisingly feudal-based, or evil empires or oligarchies, usually corrupt, while there was far more variety of rule in the actual Middle Ages.[17] Fantasy worlds also tend to be economically medieval, and disproportionately pastoral.[18]
Sensation novel[edit]
The sensation novel was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s.[66] Its literary forebears included the melodramatic novels and the Newgate novels, it also drew on the Gothic and romantic genres of fiction.[67] Whereas romance and realism had traditionally been contradictory modes of literature, they were brought together in sensation fictionof the Victorian era – combining "romance and realism" in a way that "strains both modes to the limit".[68][69]
The loss of identity is seen in many sensation fiction stories because this was a common social anxiety.[70]
Sensation fiction is commonly seen to have emerged as a definable genre in the wake of three novels: Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White (1859–60); Ellen (Mrs. Henry) Wood's East Lynne (1861); and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862).[71] Charles Dickens' Great Expectations (1861) is another example.[72]