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.

Northrop Frye's definition

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 elegaic" 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.

Related Topics:
Northrop Frye - Anatomy of Criticism - Aristotle - Poetics - Myth - Chivalry - Legends of saints - Elegaic - Tragedy - Angst

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Medieval examples:

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• Romance of the Rose
• Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
• Le Morte D'Arthur - Sir Thomas Malory

Romance as a fictive mode:

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• Romance of the Three Kingdoms
• Odyssey: Odysseus and Circe episode
• The Tempest