Etymology of the word: romance

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Etymology of the word romance

• c.1300, "story of a hero's adventures,"
• also (c.1330), from O.Fr. romanz "verse
  narrative," originally an adverb,
• "to write in a Romance language"
• "of or in the Roman style,"
• The connecting notion is that medieval vernacular
  tales were usually about chivalric adventure.
• Literary sense extended by 1667 to "a love
  story."
• Meaning "adventurous quality" first recorded 1801
• that of "love affair, idealistic quality" is
  from 1916.
• The verb meaning "court as a lover" is from 1942.

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Romanticism1800-1850

• In reaction to the period known as the
  Enlightenment (Deism), when science and cold
  reason were exalted, many artists and thinkers
  began to embrace a philosophy that worshipped the
  imagination
• our emotions help the external world make sense,
  and they give it meaning
• portrays the uncommon
• extraordinary people in unusual circumstances
  (Star Wars trilogy)

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• Nature was God and was very good
• Original sin was mans separation from Nature
• Human intuition replaced the Holy Spirit
• Photo courtesy of srqpix's photostream

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• Truth and the good, although changing, are
  relatively durable
• EXAMPLES
• James Fenimore Cooper
• Washington Irving

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Frontier Hero

• Traits of a frontier hero
• Coarseness and strength
• Acuteness, inquisitiveness
• Practical, inventive
• Quick to find methods around problems
• Masterful grasp of the material world
• Restless, nervous energy
• Dominant individualism
• Buoyancy and exuberance
• List compiled by Frederick Jackson Turner

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SUB-GENRES of Romanticism Gothic/Romantic
Pessimism

• Use of supernatural
• Dark landscapes, depressed characters
• EXAMPLE
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Image courtesy of nolandgrab.org/archives/frank_ge
  hry/

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Romanticism and Poe

• Rejection of rational in favor of emotional
• Setting in obscure, unknown place
• Emphasis on the strange, bizarre, unusual or
  unexpected
• Idealization of love
• Love as something pure and noble that will last
  beyond death

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Poes Contributions to literature

• Perfected the short story
• Length short enough to be read in one sitting
• Inspired future detective stories
• Single emotional effect one particular mood
  should dominate
• Poetry mood is melancholy usually produced by
  the death of a beautiful woman
• Fiction mood is horror or terror

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SUB-GENRES of Romanticism Transcendentalism

• optimism - believed that man was basically good
• individualism
• plain living
• EXAMPLES
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Henry David Thoreau

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Transcendentalist beliefs

• individual should act according to their
  innermost personal beliefs rather than follow the
  dictates of society
• each person is inherently good, capable of making
  rational decisions and is worthy of respect

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Transcendentalists of the day were angered by

• social conformity
• materialism
• lack of moral commitment

Photos courtesy of www.marclamonthill.com/date/2
007/10 and the Seattle Examiner
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Ralph Waldo Emerson

• led New England Transcendental Movement
• advocated self-reliance, self-trust, and
  individuality
• Trust thyself every heart vibrates to that iron
  string.

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Henry David Thoreau

• Famous follower of Emerson
• Walden Pond experiment
• Testing transcendental ideals
• Lived in a cabin he built
• Stayed 26 months

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• Gathered material for Walden, the book that
  immortalized him
• I went to the woods because I wished to live
  deliberately, to front only the essential facts
  of life and see if I could not learn what it had
  to teach, and not when I came to die discover
  that I had not lived.

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SUB-GENRES of Romanticism Anti-Transcendentalism

• disagreed with Transcendentalist beliefs
• the inherent goodness of man
• the worship of nature
• EXAMPLES
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Herman Melville

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Hawthorne

• Ancestors
• Major William Hathorne active role in
  persecution of Quakers
• Judge John Hathorne one of the judges ordering
  the execution of 20 persons during Salem witch
  trials

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Hawthorne cont.

• Religion
• sympathized with many Puritan values and
  viewpoints
• rejected faith in Christ and trust in the Bible
• chose moral realism over optimistic naiveté
  (transcendentalism)
• believed in the depravity of man (original sin)
• believed that evil leaves its mark on generation
  after generation

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Hawthorne cont.

• Writing
• 12 year period of isolation (age 21-33)
• human isolation was a theme he explored again and
  again
• The Scarlet Letter a story of sin and guilt
• The mysteries of the human heart and the question
  of human evil are the true subjects of
  Hawthornes writing

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Hawthorne cont.

• Writing Style Romantic Pessimism
• Allegory a story with a literal and an implied
  level of meaning
• Ambiguity doubleness or inconclusiveness of
  meaning (unresolved puzzles)
• Ambivalence coexistence of conflicting feelings
  or attitudes of an author or a reader (Puritanism
  love/hate relationship)

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Realism 1865-1914

• Historical context
• A. Civil War brings demand for a "truer" type of
  literature that doesn't idealize people or places
• B. People in society defined by "class"
  materialism
• C. Reflect ideas of Darwin (survival of the
  fittest) and Marx (how money and class structure
  control a nation)

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• focused on the details of ordinary lives,
  refusing to idealize life
• Reality is a world with no purpose, no meaning
  (beyond what can be seen) and no order
• Use terms such as dignity and human rights
  and power

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• Bad things happen all the time to good people
• There is no God or force for good
• Tell it like it is
• Still sought some meaning as long as it was
  something that could be seen or felt

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• Most famous woman of her day
• Uncle Toms Cabin
• Most influential book of the 19th Century
• First to sell one million copies
• One of the most effective documents of
  propaganda helped fuel the Civil War

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• Walt Whitman
• First publication of Leaves of Grass stirred up
  controversy
• Not only the content but his liberties with
  poetic tradition
• Invented FREE VERSE
• Simplicity better than fanciness
• Subject matter as broad as life itself

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• Diction is in the natural vernacular
• Not heightened or poetic tone may be comic,
  satiric, or matter of fact
• Use of symbolism is controlled and limited
• Realists depend more on use of images
• Objectivity in presentation
• Becomes even more important
• Obvious authorial comments or intrusions diminish
  as the century progresses

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Romanticism Realism
emphasize the ideal characters tend to be clearly heroic or clearly evil and bigger than life, they tend to represent ideal types, they are extraordinary environments can include supernatural settings or may include ambiguously "unreal" events and circumstances language tends towards the formal and/or poetic emphasize the real main characters tend to not be "heroes," they are average people, common people, more complex, flawed, and imperfect environments are natural and ordinary language includes realistic dialects and more common speech 
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• Samuel Langhorne Clemens widely thought to be
  the greatest American humorist and one of our
  greatest novelists
• Used vernacular, exaggeration, deadpan narrator
  to create humor
• Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (one of Americas
  most influential novels)

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Naturalism1865-1953

• If God exists, He is ineffective
• God is either uninterested or downright mean
• How could anyone who experienced World War I
  believe in a loving, living God?
• Nature is unpredictable and evil

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• Human life is transient as are Truth and Good
• There is no final authority
• EXAMPLES
• Jack London
• Stephen Crane
• A man said to the universe "Sir, I exist!" 
  "However," replied the universe, "The fact has
  not created in me A sense of obligation."

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Local Colorists1865-1895

• fiction and poetry that focuses on the
  characters, dialect, customs, topography, and
  other features particular to a specific region
• contributed to the reunification of the country
  after the Civil War and to the building of
  national identity

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Setting

• emphasis frequently on nature and its
  limitations frequently remote and inaccessible
• setting is integral to the story and may
  sometimes become a character in itself

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Characters

• tend to be concerned with the character of the
  district or region rather than with individuals
• characters may become character types, sometimes
  quaint or stereotypical
• characters are marked by their adherence to the
  old ways, by dialect, and by particular
  personality traits central to the region

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Plots

• It has been said that "nothing happens" in local
  color stories by women authors, and often very
  little does happen
• may include lots of storytelling and revolve
  around the community and its rituals

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Themes

• Many local color stories share an antipathy
  (feeling of dislike) to change and a certain
  degree of nostalgia (fondness) for an always-past
  golden age
• EXAMPLES
• Walt Whitman
• Emily Dickinson
• Kate Chopin

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• Realism focused on details of ordinary lives
  refusing to idealize life
• Local Color located fiction and poetry in
  specific geographical location emphasized
  landscape, customs, dialect, dress, etc.
• Naturalism extended realism further seeking to
  present what the author sees w/o making judgments

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Genre Perceived the individual as Romantics a
god Realists simply a person Naturalists a
helpless object
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Modernism 1900-1940

• Rejected traditional themes and subject matter
• Focused on alienated individuals rather than
  heroes of society
• Themes of impermanence and change
• Use of understatement and irony to reveal
  important emotions and ideas

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• Use of stream-of-consciousness technique to
  further plot by showing the conflicts from both
  inside and outside the characters
• EXAMPLES
• T.S. Eliot John Steinbeck
• F. Scott Fitzgerald Ernest Hemingway
• Robert Frost Carl Sandburg
• e. e. cummings Langston Hughes
• Zora Neale Hurston