Description of romance narrative
Romance
as narrative, plot, or story of individual on a quest or mission, overcoming tests or trials to reach a transcendent goal
In popular use today, "romance" means love or a love story, 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."
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!
Definitions:
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)
Attributes of romance narrative:
· plot or story-line: journey, quest, mission, self-transformation, or adventure involving tests or trials that strengthen or refine the protagonist.
o separation & reunification as recurrent actions or cycles (as in rescues, recoveries)
o desire & loss as mechanisms for pushing the romance narrative forward.
· characterization: simple, moralistic, symbolic: good guy-bad guy; fair lady-dark lady; innocent child and corrupt adult (contrast tragedy's mixed characters)
o heroic individualism
· 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 honour, chivalry, gallantry, purity (or these qualities oppositional counterparts: shame, indecency, base motives)
· conclusion as transcendence: 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 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.
A popular American variant on the romance narrative is the Western. Good guys wear white hats instead of shining armour 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 dishonour or abuse to women.
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."
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.
Description of romance narrative
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 "saviour"); 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 fulfilment 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.)
· romantic comedy or upbeat romance: the couple is elevated to a transcendent moment like a wedding or dance; or the macho hero honourably vanquishes his dishonourable antagonist.
· tragic romance: the hero or couple desires a goal so high or daring as to be forbidden > tragic loss!
o yet the vision survives, renewing the romance cycle of desire and loss
Variation on usage: the "Family Romance"
This narrative theme is derived from several writings by Freud. The idea is that in the life of every child is a repressed desire that the child's parents be superior to what they are and that the child, by extension, be a princess, a prince, or some other "more than mortal" sort.
Indeed, for many mythic or religious heroes, a "divine parent" (or some variation) is developed in order to create a noble background for a common person who rises from the common folk.
· Oedipus, found by peasants, given to king and queen.
· Moses (a reverse pattern), passing from the Hebrew slaves to the daughter of Pharaoh
· King Arthur, evidently a simple squire, but when he pulls the sword from the stone it is revealed that he is the son of Uther, the old King.
· Jesus, apparently the son of a carpenter but attributively the son of God.
· President Clinton's handshake with John Kennedy may be a recent variant.
In literature:
In Last of the Mohicans, the tortoise tattoo reveals that Uncas, instead of being a common captive of war, is the descendant of the "first people" and the chiefs of the Tortoise clan.
In any number of popular romances or fairy tales, the theme that "someday my prince will come" and elevate the dreamer to an elite status.
In general, the "elevation" theme of the "family romance" corresponds to the "transcendence" theme of the romance narrative.