ROMANCE vs. NOVELS

In the history of the novel, many critics distinguish between “Romance” and “Novel”

Both are works of long fiction

“The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it was written.  The Romance in lofty and elevated language, describes what has never happened nor is likely to.”

In common usage, Romance refers to works with extravagant characters, remote and exotic places, highly exciting and heroic events, passionate love, or mysterious or supernatural experiences.

In a more sophisticated sense, Romance refers to works relatively free of the more restrictive aspects of realistic verisimilitude.

Hawthorne, in the Preface to The House of the Seven Gables:

• The Romance “sins unpardonably, so far as it may swerve aside from the truth of the human heart”; yet it has, he insisted, “a right to present that truth under circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer’s own choosing or creation”

Northrup Frye, in his classification of the modes of literature:

• Romance has to do with characters whose powers exceed those of normal human beings but fall short of those of gods.

Examples:

• Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
• Melville’s Moby Dick
• Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
• Faulkner’s Absolom, Absolom!