The term “romance”, has been traditionally looked on as a feminine genre. It has shifted from the courtly romance mode of the classical prose stories and medieval knightly tales, to the romantic novel which emerged in the early eighteenth century and has developed into what modern readers would recognise as romance literature today. The term originally meant literature written in a romance language, and yet, fairly early on, as discussed in the initial essays in this volume, Anglo‐Norman and medieval writers were aware enough of certain constructs and romance tropes to use them to create specific kinds of works, and, in the case of Chaucer's Sir Thopas, satirise them. The motifs of this early work – a quest or journey, examination of the human condition, honour, separation and the winning of love still characterize romance writing today, from the ubiquitous Mills & Boon series, to “chick lit”, science fiction, fantasy and the modern novel.
The Companion to Romance, the 27th contribution to the Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture series, attempts to offer “a way through the tangled web of romance” to clarify its definitions, and consider the historical and literary development and traditions. This volume also considers the influences of past romantic modes on various writers over the centuries, and on a changing readership with developing literary tastes. Thirty authors from universities in Europe, North America and Australia have contributed to this book, with chapters ranging from the classical roots of ancient romance, all the way to the modern novel. In between there are examinations of medieval quest romances and the many treatments of the Arthurian legend, the quasi‐romances of Chaucer and Shakespeare (Chaucer was especially snobbish about this seemingly frivolous literary mode) and through to renaissance literature, the romance characteristics of the works of Spenser and Sidney and the influence of the “Gloriana” figure on writing in this period.
After this we are in more familiar romance territory as the Companion turns to the rise of the novel. There are several essays on eighteenth century literature: the sensationalist gothic of Horace Walpole and Mrs Radcliffe to the picaresque romances of Henry Fielding, the moral doorstoppers of Samuel Richardson and then on into the familiar territory of Austen and Burney, where the romance novel becomes, structurally and thematically, the kind of work we are used to describing as “romance” in the modern era. The essays sweep on into Victorian literature (Dickens, Gaskell, the Brontës), looking at the development of romance themes, such as the “fair unknown”, exploring the human condition and sending the protagonist through physical and emotional journeys to claim their rewards (love, money, stature) or fate at the end of the novel.
The Victorian fad of medieval fantasy, portrayed in the art and literature of Dante Rossetti and Tennyson, is examined and then the book moves on to the twentieth century where imperial romance and the revisiting of myth from Yeats and T.S. Eliot progress to modern fantasy and science fiction adventure. The last essays consider modern romance and the constructs of romance which have developed over the centuries and which are used by authors such as Jeanette Winterson and Iris Murdoch as well as in the “degenerate form” of the Silhouette/Harlequin series or Jilly Cooper potboilers. These latter literary efforts may be derided as cliché‐ridden and absurd (much as the romance genre itself has been derided down the years as unworthy), but they have at their roots a tradition and structure which this book has traced all the way back to the ancient classical romance which Elizabeth Archibald looks at in the first chapter.
It is a whirlwind tour through nearly ten centuries of literature, and although the Companion may not come up with a definitive answer to the question: “What is romance?” it does a good job of defining what it was at various points over the last thousand years: we see that romance and romantic structures are, by and large, reflections of their time. The literary examination is wide‐ranging: a chapter on chap‐books and penny histories, which villagers bought from itinerant peddlers, stands side by side with an analysis of romance tropes in well‐known Victorian works. Each chapter can be read alone, or as part of a chronological romance history according to the arrangement of the chapters in the book itself. Readers seeking alternative ways of reading around the romance genre will also be helped by the cross‐referencing at the end of every chapter, which lists any other chapters with similar themes.
Although the notes inside the dust jacket recommend this book as suitable for general readers as well as scholars, in my opinion it is an academic book written for an academic audience. While I would not recommend it as an ideal purchase for a public library, it would be worth acquiring for an academic humanities collection and, from my own experience, would be particularly useful for English literature students at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
