"How Arthur by the mean of Merlin gat Excalibur his sword of the Lady of the Lake", illustration for Le Morte Darthur, J. M. Dent & Co., London (1893–1894), by Aubrey Beardsley
Romance, is a "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents". This genre contrasted with the main tradition of the novel, which realistically depict life.[1] These works frequently, but not exclusively, take the form of the historical novel.[2]Walter Scott describes romance as a "kindred term",[3] and many European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo".[4]
There is a second type of romance, genre fictionlove romances, where the primary focus is on love and marriage.[5] The term "romance" is now mainly used to refer to this type, and for other fiction it is "now chiefly archaic and historical" (OED). Works of fiction such as Wuthering Heights[6] and Jane Eyre[7][8] combine elements from both types of romance.
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 either romantic love, or "the character or quality that makes something appeal strongly to the imagination, and sets it apart from ... everyday life" and is associated with "adventure, heroism, chivalry, etc." (OED). The latter sense connects it with the Romantic movement, and the gothic novel, as well as to the medieval romance tradition,[9] though the genre has a long history that includes the ancient Greek novel.[10]
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.[11]
The following are the two main definitions relating to literature found in the Oxford English Dictionary:
A fictitious narrative, usually in prose, in which the settings or the events depicted are remote from everyday life, or in which sensational or exciting events or adventures form the central theme; a book, etc., containing such a narrative. Now chiefly archaic and historical;
A story of romantic love, esp. one which deals with love in a sentimental or idealized way; a book, film, etc., with a narrative or story of this kind. Also as mass noun: literature of this kind.
Overlap is also sometimes found between the above terms, when literary romance also contains a strong love interest. Examples include Wuthering Heights[12] and Jane Eyre.[13][14]
And in other words:
With the rise of realism in the novel, the romance began to be considered a less serious and more frivolous genre, so that in the 20th century the term 'romantic novel' is often used disparagingly, to imply a contrast with a realist novel ... The term gradually came to mean any fiction remote from the conditions and concerns of everyday life. In this sense, romance is a broad term which can include or overlap with such genres as the historical novel or fantasy. In popular culture, however, a romance has come to mean specifically a love story, in which a happy ending follows a series of vicissitudes.[15]
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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18] Fantasy worlds also tend to be economically medieval, and disproportionately pastoral.[19]
The rise of the modern novel as an alternative to the chivalric romance began with Miguel de Cervantes, and, especially with, Don Quixote (1605, 1615).[23] Initially seen as a comedy satirizing chivalry, in the 19th century it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell "whose side Cervantes was on". Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote's idealism and nobility are viewed by the post-chivalric world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality.[24]
While the modern literary fiction romance was influenced by medieval romance via the Gothic novel, and the interest of Romantic writers in the medieval period, William Morris and J. R. R. Tolkien were directly influenced by medieval literature. In the nineteenth century William Morris wrote a series of imaginative fictions usually referred to as the "prose romances",[25][26] which were attempts to revive the genre of medieval romance, and written in imitation of medieval prose. These novels– including The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End– have been credited as important milestones in the history of fantasy fiction, because, while other writers wrote of foreign lands, or of dream worlds, or the future (as Morris did in News from Nowhere), Morris's works were the first to be set in an entirely invented fantasy world.[27] On its publication, The Well at the World's End was praised by H. G. Wells, who compared the book to Malory and admired its writing style.[28]
While fantasy is, generally speaking, not significant in the works of romance writers, Walter Scott's definition includes "marvellous and uncommon incidents". Hawthorne, as noted above, also described romance as "not being concerned with the possible or probable course of ordinary experience".
In the preface of the second edition, Walpole claims The Castle of Otranto is "an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern." He defines the "ancient" romance as being defined by its fantastic nature ("its imagination and improbability") while defining the "modern" romance as being more deeply rooted in literary realism ("a strict adherence to common life," in his words).[31] By combining fantastic situations (helmets falling from the sky, walking portraits, etc.) with supposedly real people acting in a "natural" manner, Walpole created a new and distinct style of literary fiction, which has frequently been cited as a template for all subsequent gothic novels.[32][33]The Monthly Review stated that for "[t]hose who can digest the absurdities of Gothic fiction" Otranto offered "considerable entertainment".[34]
The Castle of Otranto is widely regarded as the first Gothic novel, and, with its knights, villains, wronged maidens, haunted corridors and things that go bump in the night, is the spiritual godfather of Frankenstein and Dracula, the creaking floorboards of Edgar Allan Poe and the shifting stairs and walking portraits of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts.
—"Strawberry Hill, Horace Walpole's fantasy castle, to open its doors again", The Guardian.[35]
Charles Dickens was influenced by gothic fiction and incorporated gothic imagery, settings and plot devices in his works.[36] Victorian gothic moved from castles and abbeys into contemporary urban environments: in particular London, in Oliver Twist, and Bleak House.[37]Great Expectations contains elements of the Gothic genre, especially Miss Havisham, the bride frozen in time, and the ruined Satis House filled with weeds and spiders.[38] Other characters linked to this genre include the aristocratic Bentley Drummle, because of his extreme cruelty; Pip himself, who spends his youth chasing a frozen beauty; the monstrous Orlick, who systematically attempts to murder his employers. Then there is the fight to the death between Compeyson and Magwitch, and the fire that ends up killing Miss Havisham, scenes dominated by horror, suspense, and the sensational.[39]
Historical romance
Historical romance (also historical novel) is a broad category of fiction in which the plot takes place in a setting located in the past. Walter Scott helped popularize this genre in the early 19th century. Literary fiction historical romances continue to be published, and a notable recent example is Wolf Hall (2009), a multi-award-winning novel by English historical novelist Hilary Mantel. It is also a genre of mass-market fiction, which is related to the broader romantic love genre.
Walter Scott
Walter Scott with Waverley (1814) invented "the true historical novel".[40] At the same time he was influenced by gothic romance, and had collaborated in 1801 with 'Monk' Lewis on Tales of Wonder.[40] With his Waverley novels Scott "hoped to do for the Scottish border" what Goethe and other German poets "had done for the Middle Ages, "and make its past live again in modern romance".[41] Scott's novels "are in the mode he himself defined as romance, 'the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents'".[42] He used his imagination to re-evaluate history by rendering things, incidents and protagonists in the way only the novelist could do. Scott, the novelist, resorted to documentary sources as any historian would have done, but as a romantic he gave his subject a deeper imaginative and emotional significance.[42] By combining research with "marvelous and uncommon incidents", Scott attracted a far wider market than any historian could, and was the most famous novelist of his generation, throughout Europe.[40]
Walter Scott had an immense impact throughout Europe. "His historical fiction ... created for the first time a sense of the past as a place where people thought, felt and dressed differently".[44] His historical romances "influenced Balzac, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dumas, Pushkin, and many others; and his interpretation of history was seized on by Romantic nationalists, particularly in Eastern Europe".[45] Auguste- Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret (1767–1843) "the principal French translator of the Waverley Novels, played a pivotal role in the diffusion of Scott's work throughout Europe". "In Italy, Poland, Russia, and Spain they were widely read long before indigenous versions appeared."[46]The reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe, edited by Murray Pittock, has articles on Scott's influence on the novels throughout Europe, including France, Spain, Austria, Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.[47] (See also, "Other authors", below).
In America he influenced Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne, amongst others.[48][49]
Relationship with Romanticism
Romance is closely associated with the Romantic movement.[50] 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.[51] 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.[52]
Precursors of the modern popular love-romance can also be found in the sentimental novelPamela, or Virtue Rewarded, by Samuel Richardson, published in 1740. Pamela was the first popular novel to be based on a courtship as told from the perspective of the heroine. Unlike many of the novels of the time, Pamela had a happy ending, when after Mr. B attempts unsuccessfully to seduce and rape Pamela multiple times, he eventually rewards her virtue by sincerely proposing an equitable marriage to her.[55] Richardson began writing Pamela as a book of letter templates,[56] in the tradition of the conduct book, that evolved into a novel.
In the early part of the Victorian era, the Brontë sisters, like Austen, wrote literary fiction that influenced later popular fiction.[57]Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre incorporates elements of both the gothic novel and Elizabethan drama, and "demonstrate[s] the flexibility of the romance novel form".[57] One 2007 British poll presented Wuthering Heights as the greatest love story of all time.[58] However, "some of the novel's admirers consider it not a love story at all but an exploration of evil and abuse".[59]Helen Small sees Wuthering Heights as being, both "one of the greatest love stories in the English language", while at the same time a "most brutal revenge narratives".[60] Some critics suggest that reading Wuthering Heights as a love story not only "romanticizes abusive men and toxic relationships but goes against Brontë's clear intent".[59] Moreover, while a "passionate, doomed, death-transcending relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw Linton forms the core of the novel",[59]Wuthering Heights
consistently subverts the romantic narrative. Our first encounter with Heathcliff shows him to be a nasty bully. Later, Brontë puts in Heathcliff's mouth an explicit warning not to turn him into a Byronic hero: After ... Isabella elop[es] with him, he sneers that she did so "under a delusion ... picturing in me a hero of romance".[59]
Emily Brontë was influenced by Walter Scott, the gothic novel, and romanticism more broadly.[61][62]
Critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, writing about A. S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance in the New York Times, noted that what he describes as the "wonderfully extravagant novel" is "pointedly subtitled 'A Romance'."[63] He says it is at once "a detective story" and "an adultery novel."[63]
Genre fiction romance novels, first developed in the 19th century, started to become more popular after the First World War. In 1919, E.M. Hull's novel The Sheik was published in the United Kingdom. The novel, which became hugely popular, was adapted into a movie (1921).[66]
The mass market version of the historical romance, is seen as beginning in 1921, when Georgette Heyer published The Black Moth. This is set in 1751, but many of Heyer's novels were inspired by Jane Austen's novels and are set around the time Austen lived, in the later Regency period. Because Heyer's romances are set more than 100 years earlier, she includes carefully researched historical detail to help her readers understand the period.[67] Unlike other popular love-romance novels of the time, Heyer's novels used the setting as a major plot device. Her characters often exhibit twentieth century sensibilities, and more conventional characters in the novels point out the heroine's eccentricities, such as wanting to marry for love.[68]
In the 1930s the British publishers Mills & Boon began releasing hardback romance novels. The books were sold through weekly two-penny libraries. In the 1950s the company began offering the books for sale through newsagents across the United Kingdom.[69]
Sensation novel
The sensation novel was a literary genre of fiction that achieved peak popularity in Great Britain in the 1860s and 1870s.[70] Its literary forebears included the melodramatic novels and the Newgate novels, it also drew on the Gothic and romanticgenres of fiction.[71] 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".[72][73] The loss of identity is seen in many sensation fiction stories because this was a common social anxiety.[74]
An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work.[77]
D'Ammassa argues that adventure fiction makes the element of danger the focus; hence he argues that Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens's Great Expectations is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure."[77]
The standard plot of Medieval romances was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies, a hero would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with a second set of adventures leading to a final reunion.
In an interview with The Paris Review, Vladimir Nabokov described Wells as his favourite writer when he was a boy and "a great artist."[90] He went on to cite The Passionate Friends, Ann Veronica, The Time Machine, and The Country of the Blind as superior to anything else written by Wells's British contemporaries. Nabokov said: "His sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, of course, but his romances and fantasies are superb."[90]
Other authors and works
As noted, many European languages do not distinguish romances from novels. In France, for example, le roman is the term used for a novel.
R. D. Blackmore described Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor, (1869) in his preface, as a romance and not a historical novel, because the author neither "dares, nor desires, to claim for it the dignity or cumber it with the difficulty of an historical novel." As such, it combines elements of traditional romance, of Sir Walter Scott's historical novel tradition, of the pastoral tradition, of traditional Victorian values, and of the contemporary sensation novel trend.[92]
The Pilot: A Tale of the Sea is an early historical romance by James Fenimore Cooper. Its subject is the life of a naval pilot during the American Revolution. It is often considered the earliest example of nautical fiction in American literature. A sailor by profession, Cooper had undertaken to surpass Walter Scott's Pirate (1821) in seamanship. Cooper's most famous romance is Last of the Mohicans. According to Susan Fenimore Cooper, Cooper first conceived the idea for the book while visiting the Adirondack Mountains in 1825 with a party of Eglish gentlemen.[97] The party passed through the Catskills, an area with which Cooper was already familiar, They passed on to Lake George and Glens Falls. Impressed with the caves behind the falls, one member of the party suggested that "here was the very scene for a romance." Cooper promised "that a book should be written, in which these caves should have a place; the idea of a romance essentially Indian in character then first suggesting itself to his mind."[98] Cooper has been called the "American Walter Scott."[99] Critic Georg Lukacs likened Fenimore Cooper's character Bumppo in the Leatherstocking Tales to Sir Walter Scott's "middling characters; because they do not represent the extremes of society, these figures can serve as tools for the social and cultural exploration of historical events, without directly portraying the history itself".[100]
My Dear Sir, — In the latter part of the coming autumn I shall have ready a new work; and I write you now to propose its publication in England. The book is a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries, and illustrated by the author's own personal experience, of two years & more, as a harpooneer.[101]
In the twentieth century Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964) often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. Her stories usually focus on morally flawed characters, frequently interacting with people with disabilities or disabled themselves (as O'Connor was), while the issue of race often appears. Most of her works feature disturbing elements.[102]
Hoffmann's novel The Devil's Elixirs (1815) was influenced by Lewis's The Monk and even mentions it. The novel also explores the motif of the Doppelgänger, the term coined by another German author and supporter of Hoffmann, Jean Paul, in his humorous novel Siebenkäs (1796–1797).[106]
Balzac was an inheritor of Walter Scott's style of the historical novel,[107] publishing in 1829 Les Chouans, a historical work in the manner of Sir Walter Scott,[108] set in 1799 Brittany. This was subsequently incorporated into La Comédie Humaine. The bulk La Comédie Humaine, however, takes place during the Bourbon Restoration and the July Monarchy, and Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature.[109]Séraphîta, with its theme of androgyny, contrasts with the realism of most of the author's best known works, delving into the fantastic and the supernatural to illustrate philosophical themes.
Louis Henri Boussenard (1847–1910) ) was dubbed "the French Rider Haggard" during his lifetime, but better known today in Eastern Europe than in Francophone countries. Boussenard's best-known book Le Capitaine Casse-Cou (1901) was set at the time of the Boer War. L'île en feu (1898) fictionalized Cuba's struggle for independence. Aspiring to emulate Jules Verne, Boussenard also turned out several science fiction novels, notably Les secrets de monsieur Synthèse (1888) and Dix mille ans dans un bloc de glace (1890), both translated by Brian Stableford in 2013 under the title Monsieur Synthesis.[110][circular reference]
Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed (1827) is an historical novel set in Lombardy in 1628, during the years of Spanish rule, which has similarities with Walter Scott's historic novel Ivanhoe, although evidently distinct. Georg Lukàcs, in The Historical Novel (1969) comments:
In Italy Scott found a successor who, though in a single, isolated work, nevertheless broadened his tendencies with superb originality, in some respect surpassing him. We refer, of course, to Manzoni's I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed). Scott himself recognized Manzoni's greatness. When in Milan Manzoni told him that he was his pupil, Scott replied that in that case Manzoni's was his best work. It is, however, very characteristic that while Scott was able to write a profusion of novels about English and Scottish society, Manzoni confined himself to this single masterpiece (p.69)
Walter Scott was perhaps more popular in Russia, "in the late 1820s and 1830s", than anywhere "on the Continent", through the French translations of Auguste- Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret. Amongst "pilgrims to Abbotsford [were] a large proportion of Russian writers, diplomats, soldiers."[113]
Walter Scott "very profoundly influenced" Pushkin, "in his capacity [as] a poet, ... a collector of folk-songs and ... the originator of the historical novel based on life ... We know that Pushkin's library contained not only Walter Scott's novels, but also his poetical works".[114]
Tolstoy's "great-great-grandson Vladimir Tolstoy, 36, inspected the recently renovated Scott Monument in Edinburgh and suggested that "without the inspiration of Scott's writing genius his famous ancestor might never have penned War and Peace". "Mr Tolstoy ... the director of the Leo Tolstoy Museum and president of the Russian Museums' Association, said his great-great grandfather drew great inspiration from Scott's novels, particularly Waverley, Ivanhoe, and Rob Roy." He also noted that "In the library of the Tolstoy Museum in Russia there are many of Scott's books, including some early editions". He "said some of Scott's books in the museum's library had comments written by Leo Tolstoy beside the text - but he would not reveal what they said".[115]
The historical novel developed in imitation of Walter Scott (80 of his works had been translated). The most notable Spanish authors are: Enrique Gil y Carrasco 1815–1846, the author of El señor de Bembibre, the best Spanish historical novel, written in imitation of Scott; Francisco Navarro Villoslada (1818–1895), who wrote a series of historical novels when the romantic genre was in decline and Realism was coming to be at its height. His novels were inspired by Basque traditions, and were set in the medieval era. His most famous work is Amaya, o los vascos en el siglo VIII (Amaya, or the Basques of the 8th century), in which the Basques and the Visigoths ally themselves against the Muslim invasion. Other authors include Mariano José de Larra, Serafín Estébanez Calderón and Francisco Martínez de la Rosa.
Citations
↑ "Essay on Romance", Prose Works volume vi, p.129, quoted in "Introduction" to Walter Scott's Quentin Durward, ed. Susan Maning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p.xxv.
↑ J. A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory,4th edition, revised C. E. Preston. London: Penguin, 1999, p. 761>
↑ Pamela Regis. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003
↑ David Punter, The Gothic, London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, p. 178.
↑ Margaret Anne Doody. "Introduction", The True Story of the Novel, pp. 1-11.
↑ Joel Porte, The Romance in America: Studies in Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and James. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1969., p.95
↑ Raphael Lyne. Shakespeare's Late Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 6 and 99
↑ See Paul Scarron, The Comical Romance, Chapter XXI. "Which perhaps will not be found very Entertaining" (London, 1700) with its call for the new genre. online edition
↑ Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, letter #239 to Peter Szabo Szentmihalyi, draft, October 1971.
↑ Gardner Dozois, "Preface". Modern Classics of Fantasy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. pp. xvi-xvii
↑ Davis, Paul (2007). Critical Companion to Charles Dickens, A Literary Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, Inc. pp.134–135. ISBN978-0-8160-6407-6.
1 2 3 The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, ed. Marion Wynne Davis. New York: Prentice Hall, 1990, p.885.
↑ The Bloomsbury Guide to English Literature, ed. Marion Wynne Davis, p.884.
1 2 The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol.2, 7th edition, ed. M.H. Abrams. New York: Norton, 2000, pp.20–21.
↑ "Abstract": James Watt, '"Sir Walter Scott and the Medievalist Novel". The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, ed. Joanne Parker and Corinna Wagner. Oxford U.P., 2020.
↑ "Abstract": M. Pittock, ed., The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe.
↑ Paul Barnaby, "Restoration Politics and Sentimental Poetics in A.-J.-B. Defauconpret's Translations of Sir Walter Scott".Translation and Literature, Spring 2011, Vol. 20, No. 1, Readings in Romantic Translation (Spring 2011), pp. 6-28
↑ Andy Sawyer, "[William] Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950)", in Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction. New York: Routledge, 2010. ISBN0-203-87470-6 (pp. 205–210).
↑ Richard Bleiler, "John Davis Beresford (1873–1947)" in Darren Harris-Fain, ed. British Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Before World War I. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1997. pp. 27–34. ISBN0-8103-9941-5.
↑ Brian Stableford, "Against the New Gods: The Speculative Fiction of S. Fowler Wright". in Against the New Gods and Other Essays on Writers of Imaginative Fiction Wildside Press LLC, 2009 ISBN1-4344-5743-5 (pp. 9–90).
↑ "Mitchison, Naomi", in Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist, 1700–1974: With Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II. Robert Reginald, Douglas Menville, Mary A. Burgess. Detroit—Gale Research Company. ISBN0-8103-1051-1 p. 1002.
↑ Michael D. Sharp, Popular Contemporary Writers, Marshall Cavendish, 2005 ISBN0-7614-7601-6 p. 422.
↑ Michael R. Collings, Brian Aldiss. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1986. ISBN0-916732-74-6 p. 60.
↑ Phillips, Mary Elizabeth (1913). James Fenimore Cooper. John Lane Company, New York, London. p. 160
↑ The Historical Novel. Penguin Books, 1969, pp. 69-72.
↑ Herman Melville, The Writings of Herman Melville, Volume Fourteen. Edited by Lynn Horth. Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Libra, 1993, p.163
↑ Mike Ashley, "Hoffmann, E(rnst) T(heodor) A(madeus) ", in St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost, and Gothic Writers, ed. David Pringle. Detroit: St. James Press/Gale, 1998. ISBN978-1-55862-206-7 (pp. 668-69).
↑ Heide Crawford, The Origins of the Literary Vampire. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016, p. xiii.
↑ Hogle, J.E., The Cambridge Companion to Gothic Fiction, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 105–122.
↑ Giovanni Arpino, Emilio Salgari, il padre degli eroi, Mondadori 1991
↑ Gleb Struve, Russian Friends and Correspondents of Sir Walter Scott. Comparative Literature , Autumn, 1950, Vol. 2, No. 4 (Autumn, 1950), pp. 307- 326. Duke University Press
↑ Peter Struve, Walter Scott and Russia. The Slavonic and East European Review , Jan., 1933, Vol. 11, No. 32 (Jan., 1933), pp. 397-410.
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name refers to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels.
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels Ivanhoe (1819), Rob Roy (1817), Waverley (1814), Old Mortality (1816), The Heart of Mid-Lothian (1818), and The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), along with the narrative poems Marmion (1808) and The Lady of the Lake (1810). He had a major impact on European and American literature.
Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the setting of particular real historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other types of narrative, including theatre, opera, cinema, and television, as well as video games and graphic novels. It often makes many use of symbolism in allegory using figurative and metaphorical elements to picture a story.
Sword and sorcery (S&S), or heroic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters. The genre originated from the early-1930s works of Robert E. Howard. The term "sword and sorcery" was coined by Fritz Leiber in the 6 April 1961 issue of the fantasy fanzine Ancalagon, to describe Howard and the stories that were influenced by his works. In parallel with "sword and sorcery", the term "heroic fantasy" is used, although it is a more loosely defined genre.
Wuthering Heights is the only novel by the English author Emily Brontë, initially published in 1847 under her pen name "Ellis Bell". It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with the Earnshaws' foster son, Heathcliff. The novel, influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction, is considered a classic of English literature.
The English novel is an important part of English literature. This article mainly concerns novels, written in English, by novelists who were born or have spent a significant part of their lives in England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. However, given the nature of the subject, this guideline has been applied with common sense, and reference is made to novels in other languages or novelists who are not primarily British, where appropriate.
Genre fiction, also known as formula fiction or popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
Romance may refer to:
A romance novel or romantic novel is a genre fiction novel that primary focuses on the relationship and romantic love between two people, typically with an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending. Authors who have contributed to the development of this genre include Maria Edgeworth, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Charlotte Brontë.
British literature is from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in the English language. Anglo-Saxon literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles.
Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds. Fantasy literature may be directed at both children and adults.
As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of high medieval and early modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates."
Victorian literature is English literature during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). The 19th century is considered by some the Golden Age of English Literature, especially for British novels. In the Victorian era, the novel became the leading literary genre in English. English writing from this era reflects the major transformations in most aspects of English life, from scientific, economic, and technological advances to changes in class structures and the role of religion in society. The number of new novels published each year increased from 100 at the start of the period to 1000 by the end of it. Famous novelists from this period include Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, the three Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling.
Elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were an element of literature from its beginning. The modern fantasy genre is distinguished from tales and folklore which contain fantastic elements, first by the acknowledged fictitious nature of the work, and second by the naming of an author. Authors like George MacDonald (1824–1905) created the first explicitly fantastic works.
Medievalism is a system of belief and practice inspired by the Middle Ages of Europe, or by devotion to elements of that period, which have been expressed in areas such as architecture, literature, music, art, philosophy, scholarship, and various vehicles of popular culture. Since the 17th century, a variety of movements have used the medieval period as a model or inspiration for creative activity, including Romanticism, the Gothic revival, the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts movements, and neo-medievalism . Historians have attempted to conceptualize the history of non-European countries in terms of medievalisms, but the approach has been controversial among scholars of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Adventure fiction is a type of fiction that usually presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. Some adventure fiction also satisfies the literary definition of romance fiction.
Elements of the supernatural and the fantastic were an element of literature from its beginning, though the idea of a distinct genre, in the modern sense, is less than two centuries old.
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story ", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance". Such "romances" should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love. M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
Nautical fiction, frequently also naval fiction, sea fiction, naval adventure fiction or maritime fiction, is a genre of literature with a setting on or near the sea, that focuses on the human relationship to the sea and sea voyages and highlights nautical culture in these environments. The settings of nautical fiction vary greatly, including merchant ships, liners, naval ships, fishing vessels, life boats, etc., along with sea ports and fishing villages. When describing nautical fiction, scholars most frequently refer to novels, novellas, and short stories, sometimes under the name of sea novels or sea stories. These works are sometimes adapted for the theatre, film and television.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
