terms & themes

situation, relationships apparently normal > outside force disrupts > hero begins quest to resolve or restore > tests / trials > achievement of goal / transcendence

but in literary studies romance means a broader, more inclusive type of story or narrative that usually features a hero's or heroine's journey or quest through tests and trials (often involving a villain or antagonist) in order to reach a transcendent goal, whether love, salvation or rescue, or justice (usually revenge).

The narratives or story-lines of most popular movies and novels can be characterized as romances. A familiar variant or combination in film is "romantic comedy" (Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, etc) which typically involves a journey or plot in which two charming but mismatched characters endure mistakes and obstructions to arrive at a common union and save each other through love (which ends the story).

But macho action-adventure movies like Rocky, Rambo, Taken, and The Transporter are also romances, often involving a quest for vengeance for the death of a loved one, or the rescue of a loved one. A love-element may be present but is often de-emphasized for the sake of the larger narrative quest and its context.

Learning challenge: Overcoming or resolving "cognitive dissonance" between "romance as women's love story" and "romance as hero-story of quest, trial, and transcendence."

Many students understand these distinctions as instructor explains or reinforces them, but few exams or essays refer to the romance narrative (or they keep referring to romance exclusively as a love story), indicating that previous associations overpower the new information, which is not reinforced except in advanced literary studies.

Instructor continues to teach the difference for sake of preparing students who may encounter academic uses of the romance narrative in the future or the few who will remember it when they watch pop-culture narratives like action-adventure or science fiction movies, or read pop-culture narratives like popular novels or graphic novels.

Intellectual outcome: Romance is the essential narrative of popular literature, and since popular literature succeeds primarily on a surface level instead of an intellectual or critical level, only a few people can be expected to know or care, but they should!

plot or story-line: journey, quest, mission, pilgrimage of self-transformation or adventure involving tests or trials that strengthen or refine and elevate the protagonist.

separation & reunification as recurrent actions or cycles of trials and tests (e.g., rescues, recoveries, escapes)

characterization: simple, moralistic, symbolic: good guy-bad guy; fair lady-dark lady; innocent child and corrupt adult (contrast tragedy's mixed characters)

settings: extreme, idealized, long ago and far away or deep into the future or a fantasy-world (contrast with realism, which concentrates on here and now)

codes of honor, chivalry, gallantry, purity (or these qualities oppositional counterparts: shame, indecency, base motives)

conclusion as transcendence (or escape or deliverance from prior struggle): The fairy tale as a romance narrative concludes with conflicts ended and the couple "living happily ever after." In tales of chivalry, the knight slays the dragon, wins the hand of the fair lady, or sees the Holy Grail. In westerns, the cowboy cleans up the town and (maybe with his girl) "rides off into the sunset." Rambo or some other action hero flies off in his helicopter or drives off in his hot car. Also, "Let's get away from it all."

The story may open as though all is well, but action usually begins with a problem of separation. Characters are separated from each other (e. g., a true-love romance), or a need arises to rescue someone (a lost-child story; the protagonist will be a rescuer or "savior"); or characters are separated from some object of desire (as with the search for the Holy Grail or Romancing the Stone or a lottery ticket).

Action often takes the form of a physical journey or adventure; characters may be captured or threatened and rescued. Episodes in the narrative may involve trials, tests, or ordeals in which desire or vision or protagonist is tested.

Action may take the form of a personal transformation or a journey across class lines, as in Cinderella, Pretty Woman, or An Officer and a Gentleman, or Dirty Dancing.

Protagonists are motivated by desire for fulfillment or a vision of transcendent grace; cf. desire and loss.

The conclusion of a romance narrative is typically “transcendence”—“getting away from it all” or “rising above it all.” The characters “live happily ever after” or “ride off into the sunset” or “fly away” from the scenes of their difficulties (in contrast with tragedy’s social engagement or comedy’s restored unity).

Characters in romance tend to be starkly good or bad, in contrast with tragedy’s “mixed” characters. The problem that starts the action is usually attributed less to a flaw in the hero than to a villain or some outside force.

(Most Hollywood movies and most popular novels are romances, but some “independent movies” involve tragedy.)

Taken as "romance narrative":
hopefully happy family separated by evil intruder;
super-dad or hero-brother avenges evil,
rescues & reunifies family's lost children,
transcends to "happily ever after"
(or until the next sequel)

Visuals below: The romance narrative's most familiar origin is that of the medieval knight on a quest, sometimes for a transcendent vision of the Holy Grail (Christ's communion cup), signifying purity of heart and devotion to service. That service often involved rescuing fair ladies (damsels in distress) from impure or villainous rivals.

Below: A popular American variant on the romance narrative is the Western. Good guys wear white hats instead of shining armor and bad guys wear black hats instead of appearing as the "dark knight" or "black knight." Again characters are starkly divided into good and bad, and love-romance involving rescues of women are common.

One way to tell good guys and bad guys apart in Westerns and other masculine romance-adventures is that good guys are polite or "chivalrous" toward women, while bad guys may threaten dishonor or abuse to women.

Below: Science fiction stories resemble tales of western cowboys and medieval knights by using romance narrative and characterization. Fairly all science fiction novels are romances. H.G. Wells, one of the "fathers of science fiction," referred to his science fiction novels as "scientific romances"

Below at left, Darth Vader as the black knight (of the darkside) battles the good and pure Luke Skywalker, a "Jedi Knight."

Below at right, love-romance continues to feature but does not necessarily define or limit the romance narrative.

Below: Gender-bending in recent romance narratives (Hunger Games, Game of Thrones) features women characters as heroic individuals using men's weapons on their own quests and not waiting to be rescued.

The romance narrative derives primarily from Europe or Eurasia. How does it adapt to an American setting?

Compare "frontier romances" like The Leatherstocking Tales (e.g. The Last of the Mohicans)

from A Handbook to Literature, by C. Hugh Holman (3d ed.), Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972.

Romance: This word was first used for Old French as a language derived from Latin or "Roman" [now known as "romance languages" incl. Spanish, French, Italian] to distinguish it from Latin itself . . . . Later romance was applied to any work written in French, and as stories of knights and their deeds were the dominant form of Old French Literature, the word romance was narrowed to mean such stories. . . . Special modern uses of the word romance may be noted from the account in the New English Dictionary: "romantic fiction"; "an extravagant fiction"; a "fictitious narrative in prose of which the scene and incidents are very remote from those of ordinary life" . . . .

Medieval Romance: Medieval romances are tales of adventure in which knights, kings, or distressed ladies, acting under the impulse of love, religious faith, or the mere desire for adventure, are the chief figures. . . . Structurally, the medieval romance follows the loose pattern of the quest. . . .

from Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957.

In the form in which we possess it, most of [European fiction] has already moved into the category of romance. 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. (34)

1. A medieval narrative (originally in verse, later also in prose) relating the legendary or extraordinary adventures of some hero of chivalry. Also in extended use, with reference to narratives about important religious figures. (Originally denoting a composition in the vernacular [French, etc.] as contrasted with works in Latin.) (first historical usage app. 1300CE)

3.a. 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. (first historical usage 1589)

5.a. 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. cf. Romantic, Romanticism.

5.b. Ardour or warmth of feeling in a love affair; love, esp. of an idealized or sentimental kind. (first historical usage 1858)

7. 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. (first historical usage 1901)

8 Originally: the vernacular language of medieval France, as opposed to Latin. In later use also: any of various related Romance languages, such as Provençal (Occitan) and Spanish. Now esp.: the Romance languages collectively.

For Literature of the Future: how the Bible's Book of Revelation may embody or resemble a romance narrative

Purpose: Though the future predicted by Revelation is falsified by the history of fairly every generation for two thousand years, Revelation remains perhaps the most popular book of the Bible, especially among Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians, owing largely to its vivid imagery, suggestive symbolism, and other literary features, but also for promising deliverance for the faithful (i.e., the believing reader) and suffering to non-believers or other enemies.

2. Narrative genres: How does the plot-pattern of Revelation resemble the plot narrative of a romance? Pay attention to the gradual revelation of the central character of Jesus—how does he appear? How is he like a hero in a romance-rescue story? How are the Satanic figures like the villain? (instructor will lead)

In its simplest form, the "romance narrative" follows this basic sequence or structure

The Creation-Apocalypse narrative embodies the romance narrative in the following terms (more or less)

previous state of perfection: Garden of Eden, Christ among the Apostles, or Apostolic era

fall, separation (Adam & Eve exiled from Eden, cursed to labor; Christ crucified, resurrected, ascended; disciples left to own leadership)

disasters build on each other > state of sin, believers beset by struggle, opposition

Other ways Revelation fuffills the romance narrative: clear distinction between good heroes (light, order) and evil antagonists (dark, disorder), in contrast to tragedy, where characters are mixtures of good and bad.