Reference:
Review Excerpts 'The romance is nearest of all literary forms to the wish fulfilment
dream, and for that reason it has socially a curiously paradoxical role'
(186).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | literary | reason |
role |
romance |
'The essential element of plot in romance is adventure, which
means that romance in naturally a sequential and processional form'
(186).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | form | plot |
romance |
'The complete form of the romance is clearly the successful quest,
and such a completed form has three main stages: the stage of the
perilous journey and the preliminary minor adventures; the crucial
struggle, usually some kind of battle in which either the hero of his foe, or
both, must die; and the exaltation of the hero' (187).
Domains: Under construction |
'A quest involving conflict assumes two main characters, a
protagonist or hero, and an antagonist or enemy' (187).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | protagonist |
'We have distinguished myth from romance by the hero's power of
action: in the myth proper he is divine, in the romance proper he is
human' (188).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | action | myth |
power |
romance |
'The central form of quest-romance is the dragon-killing theme
exemplified in the stories of St. George and Perseus' (189).
Domains: Under construction |
'In the Bible we have a sea-monster usually named leviathan, who is
described as the enemy of the Messiah, and whom the Messiah is
destined to kill in the "day of the Lord"' (189).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | 'Now if the leviathan is the whole fallen world of sin and death and
tyranny into which Adam fell, it follows that Adam's children are born, live,
and die inside his belly' (190).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | world |
'In the Old Testament the Messiah-figure of Moses leads his people
out of Egypt' (190).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | 'The leviathan is usually a sea-monster, which means metaphorically
that he is the sea, and the prophecy that the Lord will hook and land the
leviathan in Ezekiel is identical with the prophecy in Revelation that there
shall be no more sea' (191).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | 'Lastly, if the leviathan is death, and the hero has to enter the body
of death, the hero has to die, and if his quest is completed the final stage
of it is, cyclically, rebirth, and dialectically, resurrection' (192).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | 'The four mythoi that we are dealing with, comedy, romance,
tragedy, and irony, may now be seen as four aspects of a central
unifying myth....conflict is the basis or archetypal theme of romance
...catastrophe ... is the archetypal theme of tragedy....the sense that
heroism and effective action are absent, disorganized or foredoomed to
defeat, and that confusion and anarchy reign over the world, is the
archetypal theme of irony and satire....recognition of a newborn society
rising in triumph around a still somewhat mysterious hero and his bride,
is the archetypal theme of comedy' (192).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | action | basis |
comedy |
irony |
myth |
recognition |
romance |
satire |
theme |
world |
'We have spoken of the Messianic hero as a redeemer of society,
but in the secular quest-romances more obvious motives and rewards
for the quest are more common' (192).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | 'The quest-romance has analogies to both rituals and dreams'
(193).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | 'The characterization of romance follows its general dialectic
structure, which means that subtlety and complexity are not much
favored. Characters tend to be either for or against the quest'
(195).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | dialectic |
romance |
structure |
'The characters who elude the moral antithesis of heroism and
villainy generally are or suggest spirits of nature' (196).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | antithesis |
nature |
'Romance, like comedy, has six isolatable phases': 1) '...the myth of
the birth of the hero'; 2) '...the innocent youth of the hero'; 3) '...the normal
quest theme'; 4) '...the maintaining of the integrity of the innocent world
against the assault of experience'; 5) '...a reflective, idyllic view of
experience from above'; and 6) '...the end of a movement from active to
contemplative adventure' (198-202).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | active | comedy |
integrity |
myth |
romance |
theme |
world |
'One important detail in poetic symbolism remains to be
considered. This is the symbolic presentation of the point at which the
undisplaced apocalyptic world and the cyclical world of nature come into
alignment, and which we propose to call the point of epiphany'
(203).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | epiphany |
nature |
world |
'Like comedy, tragedy is best and most easily studied in drama, but
it is not confined to drama, nor to actions that end in disaster'
(207).
Domains: Under construction |
'It is a commonplace of criticism that comedy tends to deal with
characters in a social group, whereas tragedy is more concentrated on a
single individual' (207).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | comedy |
criticism |
'In its most elementary form, the vision of law (dike) operates as lex
talionis or revenge. The hero provokes enmity, or inherits a situation of
enmity, and the return of the avenger constitutes the catastrophe'
(208-9).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | form | situation |
'All theories of tragedy as morally explicable sooner or later run into
the question: Is an innocent sufferer in tragedy ... not a tragic figure?'
(2xx).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | figure |
'In irony, as distinct from tragedy, the wheel of time completely
encloses the action, and there is no sense of an original contact with a
relatively timeless world' (214).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | action | irony |
world |
'Tragedy usually makes love and the social structure irreconcilable
and contending forces' (218).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | structure |
'The phases of tragedy move from the heroic to the ironic, the first
three corresponding to the first three phases of romance, the last three to
the last three of irony' (219).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | irony | romance |
Last Modified:
July-12-96 9:17:1
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