About Romances
“We are now to proceed to the modern Romances, which have been so often mistaken for the old ones.—After these have been exploded in a great measure, the taste for them was revived in France, by Calprenede, D’Urfe, the Scudery’s, and many others; who wrote new Romances upon a different plan: which in some kinds of refinement were superior to the old ones, but in the greater merits fell very short of them. They were written with more regularity, and brought nearer to probability; but on the other hand by taking for their foundation some obscure parts of true history, and building fictitious stories upon them, truth and fiction were so blended together, that a common reader could not distinguish them, young people especially imbibed such absurd ideas of historical facts and persons, as were very difficult to be rectified."
-Euphrasia, The Progress of Romance by Clara Reeve, 1785.
Roman heroique is a term which refers to the “multi-volume historical novel of love and adventure which was the dominant form of prose fiction in the 17th century” (France 713). This branch of the "romance" family is the primary genre Arabella references in The Female Quixote, and the romances she cites were written mainly from 1640-1660. Madeleine de Scudery is the most notable writer of this form, and her Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus is considered the one of the best examples of this genre (France 713).
A new interest in subjectivity became a feature of these romances, which assisted the progression of fiction and the move into the novel (France 709). These romances are marked by their “recycling of a range of topoi” including “love stories, enchantment, shipwrecks, lost children, abduction, family feuds [and] postponed marriages” (Genieys 18). The characters and plotlines are often sourced from Greek romances, Roman histories, and other ancient stories. As evidenced in the quote above from Clara Reeve’s The Progress of Romance, and as witnessed in The Female Quixote, this form of literature was often ridiculed as “fantastic,” unethical, and possibly even dangerous for undiscerning young people (such as Arabella). The conventions of the Roman heroique eventually gave way to the nouvelle.
Exaggeration and grand speeches were two common features of the romance genre. Herbert Wynford Hill explains, particularly of La Calprenède's works, but also of the tradition in general, that in these romances "the heroines rarely open their bright eyes to receive the light that they do not open them to let out tears; but they never merely weep. They break forth into rivulets, brooks, and rivers of tears" (44).
-Euphrasia, The Progress of Romance by Clara Reeve, 1785.
Roman heroique is a term which refers to the “multi-volume historical novel of love and adventure which was the dominant form of prose fiction in the 17th century” (France 713). This branch of the "romance" family is the primary genre Arabella references in The Female Quixote, and the romances she cites were written mainly from 1640-1660. Madeleine de Scudery is the most notable writer of this form, and her Artamene ou le Grand Cyrus is considered the one of the best examples of this genre (France 713).
A new interest in subjectivity became a feature of these romances, which assisted the progression of fiction and the move into the novel (France 709). These romances are marked by their “recycling of a range of topoi” including “love stories, enchantment, shipwrecks, lost children, abduction, family feuds [and] postponed marriages” (Genieys 18). The characters and plotlines are often sourced from Greek romances, Roman histories, and other ancient stories. As evidenced in the quote above from Clara Reeve’s The Progress of Romance, and as witnessed in The Female Quixote, this form of literature was often ridiculed as “fantastic,” unethical, and possibly even dangerous for undiscerning young people (such as Arabella). The conventions of the Roman heroique eventually gave way to the nouvelle.
Exaggeration and grand speeches were two common features of the romance genre. Herbert Wynford Hill explains, particularly of La Calprenède's works, but also of the tradition in general, that in these romances "the heroines rarely open their bright eyes to receive the light that they do not open them to let out tears; but they never merely weep. They break forth into rivulets, brooks, and rivers of tears" (44).
