Comments | epea_pteroenta: Romance is the genre of fantasy, political and sexual [...] the genre of desire and of rebellion

epea_pteroenta

Romance is the genre of fantasy, political and sexual [...] the genre of desire and of rebellion

Oct 11, 2011 00:28

One of the nice things about the course I'm not currently doing very much work for, is that it is really tapping into something I've been thinking a lot about, namely "What is a romance ( Read more... )

academic: ma, academic: literary analysis, books: walter scott, books: english novels, books: romance novels

Comments 6

mysticgypsy1 October 11 2011, 01:56:23 UTC

Really like Walter Scott's definition.

Hope grad school is going well, and that the reading/writing load is manageable. Are you enjoying it?

epea_pteroenta October 14 2011, 14:51:37 UTC

haha we discussed those definitions in class yesterday and it was pointed out that he defines them in totally different ways in other place, seems to constantly contradict them and at other times doesn't seem to care about genre distinction at all...

Moral of this story (and other discussion) seems to be that WS is a slippery sort of character who can never be trusted to mean what he seems to mean. Makes me love him even more!

Course is going well though I'm not doing as much as I should - am enjoyed it though. :)

Romance, romancing, romantic tripp3235 October 11 2011, 03:28:00 UTC

Great question! I'm too lazy to look up definitions of romance itself. You have three uses of the word: noun, verb and adjective. As a noun I take it to be a relationship between two people who's feelings are more than a platonic level. When it's a verb, I see it between "seduce" and "love". As an adjective, I have a specially hard time coming up with an explanation though if you could describe fluffy hearts and puppy dogs, maybe that's how I see it would look like ( ... )

valancy_s October 12 2011, 23:09:21 UTC

I AM TAKING A COURSE ON THIS RIGHT NOW.

Seriously. We have spent seven weeks reading Romances and articles about the difference between.

epea_pteroenta October 14 2011, 14:53:15 UTC

Brilliant!

What romances have you read? The one I'm currently reading for the literary theory class specifically on novels v romances is Nathaniel Hawthorn's The House of Seven Gables which seems a rather odd choice to me at present but we shall see.

valancy_s October 14 2011, 15:16:39 UTC

We just finished Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance and are now on James's The Bostonians. Before that it was Waverley, The Last of the Mohicans, and Hope Leslie.