Romance
ROMANCE, MEDIEVAL (also called a chivalric romance): In medieval use, romance referred to
episodic French and German poetry dealing with chivalry and the adventures of knights in warfare as they
rescue fair maidens and confront supernatural challenges. The medieval metrical romances resembled the
earlier chansons de gestes and epics. However, unlike the Greek and Roman epics, medieval romances
represent not a heroic age of tribal wars, but a courtly or chivalric period of history involving highly
developed manners and civility, as M. H. Abrams notes. Their standard plot involves a single knight seeking
to win a scornful lady's favor by undertaking a dangerous quest. Along the way, this knight encounters
mysterious hermits, confronts evil blackguards and brigands, slays monsters and dragons, competes
anonymously in tournaments, and suffers from wounds, starvation, deprivation, and exposure in the
wilderness. He may incidentally save a few extra villages and pretty maidens along the way before finishing his
primary task. (This is why scholars say romances are episodic--the plot can be stretched or contracted so the
author can insert or remove any number of small, short adventures along the hero's way to the larger quest.)
Medieval romances often focus on the supernatural. In the classical epic, supernatural events originate in the
will and actions of the gods. However, in secular medieval romance, the supernatural originates in magic,
spells, enchantments, and fairy trickery. Divine miracles are less frequent, but are always Christian in origin
when they do occur, involving relics and angelic visitations. A secondary concern is courtly love and the
proprieties of aristocratic courtship--especially the consequences of arranged marriage and adultery
A large number of such romances survive due to their enormous popularity, including the works of Chrétien
de Troyes (c. 1190), Hartmann von Aue (c. 1203), Gottfried von Strassburg (c. 1210), and Wolfram von
Eschenbach (c. 1210). England produced its own romances in the fourteenth century, including the Lay of
Havelok the Dane and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In 1485, Caxton printed the lengthy romance Le Morte
D'Arthur, a prose work that constituted a grand synthesis of Arthurian legends. Gradually, the poetic genre
of medieval romance was superseded by prose works of Renaissance romance
{From K. Wheeler, “Literary Terms”}
Medieval romances are narrative fictions representing the adventures and values of the
aristocracy. Romances may be written in prose, in which case they tend to resemble "histories," with more
pretense to being truthful about the past, or they may be written in stanzaic of non-stanzaic verse, in which
case the narrators rarely make more than perfunctory efforts to simulate historicity. Characters nearly always
are, or are revealed to be, knights, ladies, kings, queens, and other assorted nobles. Plots often involve
conflicts between feudal allegiances, pursuit of quests (by males) and endurance of ordeals (by females), and
the progress or failure of love relationships, often adulterous or among unmarried members of the
court. Romances typically stress the protagonists' character development over any minor characters, and
nearly all seem like "type characters" to modern readers used to full psychological realism. Marvels, especially
the supernatural, routinely occur in romance plots, whereas they are viewed with skepticism in histories,
though they also are positively necessary to saint's lives, a narrative form which resembles both histories and
romance. "Romance" is not a synonym for social behaviors leading to sexual behavior or marriage (a Mod.E.
appropriation of one aspect of the genre). "Romantic" is a term almost never used in Medieval. Romance is
an ancestor of the novel.
{From Arnie Sanders, Goucher College}
Picaresque
The pícaros, upon whom the picaresque novel is based, were usually errand boys, porters, or factotums
(persons employed to do a wide variety of tasks) and were pictured as crafty, sly, tattered, hungry,
unscrupulous, petty thieves. They stole to escape starvation and were likable despite their defects.
The picaresque novel, a reaction against the absurd unrealities and idealism of the pastoral, sentimental, and
chivalric novels, represents the beginnings of modern Realism. It juxtaposed the basic drives of hunger
cruelty, and mistrust and the honorable, glorious, idyllic life of knights and shepherds. Hunger replaced love
as a theme, and poverty replaced wealth.
Early picaresque novels were both idealistic and realistic, tragic and comic, and the authors attacked political,
religious, and military matters. Some authors were sincere reformers, while others conveniently set off their
sermons so they might be easily avoided. They reflected the poverty and and unsound economic conditions
of late sixteenth century Spain. Spaniards were living in a dream world after the glories of the conquest of the
New World. They flocked to the cities, the upper classes refusing to work with their hands, cultivate the land
or engage in business or commerce, all of which were viewed as degrading. Poor knights starved with the
beggars. Thus, comic elements are omnipresent, the sentiment is tragic -the tragedy of a Spain that was
outwardly the most powerful nation in the world but inwardly on the path to decline and ruin. The picaresque
genre faithfully portrays these tragic conditions.
Usually the pícaro is of the lower classes. Forced into a life of servitude by the severity of the times, he drifts
into a life of petty crime and deceitfulness in his struggle for survival. The tone of the novel is hard, cynical,
skeptical, often bitter, and it often portrays the corrupt and ugly. Humor abounds, but it is only a step
removed from tears, and what appears to be funny is tragic in a different light.
In its emphasis on the seamier side of life, the picaresque novel twists and deforms reality. The pícaro lives by
his wits and steals and lies just to stay alive. His many employers give the narrator the opportunity to satirize
various social classes and to paint a portrait of a period full of living, brawling human beings.
[Extracted from: Chandler, Richard E & Kessel Schwartz, A New History of Spanish Literature, (Baton Rouge:
LSU Press, 1991), pp. 118-20.]
PICARESQUE NOVEL (from Spanish picaro, a rogue or thief; also called the picaresque narrative and
the Räuberroman in German): A humorous novel in which the plot consists of a young knave's
misadventures and escapades narrated in comic or satiric scenes. This roguish protagonist--called a picaro-makes his (or sometimes her) way through cunning and trickery rather than through virtue or industry. The
picaro frequently travels from place to place engaging in a variety of jobs for several masters and getting into
mischief. The picaresque novel is usually episodic in nature and realistic in its presentation of the seamier
aspects of society.
The genre first emerged in 1553 in the anonymous Spanish work Lazarillo de Tormes, and later Spanish
authors like Mateo Aleman and Fracisco Quevedo produced other similar works. The first English specimen
was Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller (1594). Probably the most famous example of the genre is
French: Le Sage's Gil Blas (1715), which ensured the genre's continuing influence on literature. Other examples
include Defoe's Moll Flanders, Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild, Smollett's Roderick Random, Thomas Mann's
unfinished Felix Krull, and Saul Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March. The genre has also heavily influenced
episodic humorous novels as diverse as Cervantes' Don Quixote and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
{From K. Wheeler, “Literary Terms”}