Talk:Chivalric romance

Amadis de Gaula

Well if most authors are Portuguese, I can't see the reason why it should be called the "Spanish" Amadis de Gaula. I changed it to Spanish/Portuguese...

--85.138.18.70 14:17, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

etc.

Critical Omission of Greek Romance

This article seems to be wrong. The genre in the form of prose novellas originated in late antiquity and was Greek and continued uninterrupted in Arab literature. Greek romances (or tales) furnished the plots for Ancient Roman comedies and are the basis for the tales of Boccaccio and other writers who inspired the comedies of Shakespeare. They feature children separated at birth or captured in slavery, star-crossed lovers, tokens of identification, and the like, and usually had a happy ending. The relation of the Romance to Romantic literature given here is confused and inaccurate. The term "Romance" comes from the fact that these Greek novels were written in the vernacular, which was referred to as speaking in the Roman way (romanice, an adverb) or in what we would call "vulgar Latin" , i.e., the non-literary vernacular Latin that gave rise to the languages that are today called Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Dalmatian, Ladino, etc. A complicating factor is that Greeks (including Greek speakers) of late antiquity referred to themselves as Roman, because they were part of the Eastern Roman Empire, not because they spoke Latin, necessarily. "Romance" began to include all popular literature written in the vernacular as opposed to learned works composed in Ancient Latin (a dead tongue) meant to be read by scholars, but specifically romance literature referred to the highly popular medieval chivalric epics. These epics (as opposed to the traditional Greek prose romances) featured a lot of magical and fantastic elements, enchanted swords, and the like (like the special effects of today). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mballen (talk • contribs) 18:26, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Mballen, I wish you would simply contribute most of the above to the article. I will add a reference to the wikipedia article for Ancient Greek novel. Markdf10825 (talk) 15:38, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Sagas

There is a lot of excellent material on the Scandinavian sagas. Is this really the place for such a full treatment of them, however? Bacchiad 18:18, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

There is an article Norse sagas. If the subheading were Elements of Romance in Norse sagas that might keep the discussion more on track. Shall I or would you? --Wetman 03:07, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

What about adding to the article some discussion of science fiction ("space opera"), fantasy, western ("horse opera") and other such genres, which (I think) carry the romance tradition to the present day? I don't have the required sources at hand, so I hope someone else would do it. Jussi Hirvi 20 Dec. 2005

It is strange. The emphasis on Scandinavian sagas feels a bit biased. FilipeS (talk) 20:18, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Chretien de Troyes...Marie de France?

I'm not really the person to do it (my knowledge of this genre is pretty limited) but it seems like there should be more mention of Chretien de Troye's contributions to this genre, particular Erec et Enide and/or The Knight of the Cart. Marie de France's Lais might also be good to include in the article, since although they are not technically romances, they share enough characteristics that they would probably be good to mention.

Certainly I think that the lais are closer to a true romance than some of the other works mentioned, like works of the 1500s or even 1400s which are really after romance was at the height of its form. Malory, although his Morte d'Arthur is certainly an important work and a good one to mention, is really after the height of romance (I don't *think* it's written in verse, either, is it?). Gawain and the Green Knight, although another good example, is also somewhat problematic because it is arguably really a parody of the genre (albeit not as strong a one as Done Quixote) and not, perhaps, an entirely serious example. Chretien and to a lesser extent Marie don't really suffer these issues; besides, they're famous examples of the genre in their own right. --Sailor Titan 18:58, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

homosexual????

"these were assembled in imagination at a late date as the "homosexual" (actually centered on the life and deeds of Alexander the Great)"

Is this a joke? Shouldn't this read "the Matter of Rome"?

update: I see that Wiki does have an entry on "Matter of Rome" that refers to these stories, so I edited the page to remove the offending word....

Aristophanes68 (talk) 03:11, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Potential Move

As a result of a discussion at WT:Hatnote, it was suggested that this article might ought to be renamed. There are two literary genres called "romance"; these are represented on Wikipedia as romance novel (the modern genre) and romance (genre) (the medieval genre). The proposal is that the title romance (genre) be used as more of a site index (similar to The War of the Worlds (film)), which would probably be an expanded version of romantic fiction. This article would need to be renamed, possibly to Romance (medieval literary genre). I'd like to solicit input as to whether this move would be acceptable. Karanacs (talk) 20:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

As I said on the discussion a set index may be the solution you are looking for because it allows a much more focused page designed to resolve just this kind of issue, with more room to go into detail (offer examples, references, etc.) which can resolve this kind of confusion.

Perhaps a simpler fix than renaming this (which would involve fixing all the links, etc.) would be to make the index at Romance (fiction) which would give you the chance to explain all the various aspects of this area and it would avoid hair splitting on whether something is or isn't a genre (which is partly how this arose in the first place). Just my twopenneth as I'm not an expert on the area. (Emperor (talk) 21:14, 28 February 2008 (UTC))

Too specific

This page should be about the genre of romance, whether it be modern or medieval, printed or in film. If it's going to be only about medieval romance, then it needs to be moved so the more generic article can take its place. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:05, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Modern example

David Lodge wrote Small World: An Academic Romance and this fits in with the genre. It is a satire but also a quest novel that uses extraordinary circumstances and other medieval themes and methods. Does someone know how to work this modern version into the article. WikiParker (talk) 15:51, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Move to Chivalric romance

In August 2007 this page was moved to Chivalric romance. In December the same year it was moved back.

Most articles in other Wikipedias use the word "chivalry" or "knight" in some form in the title of the article. There's probably a good reason for that. "Romance" is a very wide term, but this article indeed deals with Chivalry novels, which would probably be familiar to common people mostly through Don Quixote. To the best of my knowledge far more people today know Quixote than Amadis. This English translation of Quixote uses "books of chivalry" throughout the book itself and both "books of chivalry" or "romances of chivalry" in the introduction; "romance" is almost never alone and is usually qualified.

Given all the above reasons, i propose to move this article to Chivalric romance. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 16:57, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

What about the elements of Romance in Lord of the Rings. Have you heard of Northrop Frye? What is the suggestion based on? Have you contributed text to the article Romance (genre)?--Wetman (talk) 17:04, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Lord of the Rings is a very small part of this article; I didn't claim that i am a qualified literary critic; And i don't think that it is written anywhere that one has to contribute text to an article in order to achieve the right to propose a move.

I am simply proposing to rename this article so it would reflect its actual content - chivalry books. I believe that it would make it easier to find and a little more accessible to the general public and not just to qualified literary critics. To most people today the "romance" genre is about love stories, not about chivalry. I am not proposing to dumb this article down, just to make its title less confusing. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Saga

Why are paragraphs on the saga in general when most sagas are in fact in the older, epic genre? Chivalric sagas I could see but it's not even touching on them. Goldfritha (talk) 01:29, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Cutting. Goldfritha (talk) 20:59, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Cutting unsourced

I cut this line

Medieval romances most likely have their roots in the Ancient Greek novel, for instance the well-known Alexander romance.

on the grounds that not only is it unsourced, it is not supported by anything I've ever read, which point rather to the epics as the source of the bulk of them.Goldfritha (talk) 01:17, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Late Medieval 20th Century?

This line: "During the early 20th century romances were increasingly written as prose, and extensively amplified through cycles of continuation." is clearly meant to refer to the 14th or 15th century, I'm not sure which though. Possibly vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.185.68 (talk) 17:54, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Requested move 1

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Romance (heroic literature) Mike Cline (talk) 17:21, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

---

Romance (genre) → Chivalric Romance – The common use of Romance (genre) would be the modern romance movie and novel, not the historic medieval genre. Considering how radically different these two are, this should be renamed to make clear it's about the medieval style (as well as the occasional modern imitator). I am open to other name ideas. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:26, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support some sort of rename. A disambiguation page should exist (so redirect to romance (disambiguation) after rename). 70.24.247.54 (talk) 05:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Clarify Romance (heroic literature) is a good name to use. 70.24.247.54 (talk) 06:09, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
• Comment there are also "romances" of this form in more modern works, such as scientific romances (HG Wells & Jules Verne being the most notable authors) 70.24.247.54 (talk) 05:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)
  • Absolutely there are, and they deserve coverage here. However, most romances written today are a completely different concept than this. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 06:52, 4 February 2012 (UTC)"
• Oppose. "Romance" is the proper name of this genre.[1] The long-established name of a noble and ancient genre should not be changed simply because someone is applying to a cheezy form of pornography. I suggest Romance (heroic literature). Kauffner (talk) 12:47, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• Support Romance (heroic literature), good suggestion by Kauffner (talk · contribs) D O N D E groovily Talk to me 15:09, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose for now. I am a little puzzled over this assertion of common modern usage. I honestly don't think I've heard of "Romance" to refer to a genre of modern novels or movies. Anything to back up that assertion? Walrasiad (talk) 04:50, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
  • What? You've never heard of a romance novel? Or a romance movie? Huh? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 05:36, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
  • IMDB's ranking of top romance movies. While you may dispute whether some of these are really romances, it's hard to dispute that there are no modern romances. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 05:57, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

To be frank, no. I've heard of "romantic novels", and "romantic movies" but not of "a romance" as a modern literary genre. Just in the historical sense. Website abbreviations are not a good guide. When have you heard the phrase, say, "Pretty Woman is a romance" as opposed to "Pretty Woman is a romantic movie"? Walrasiad (talk) 12:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure "Pretty Woman is a romance" is the only way I've heard it described. But that's really irrelevant. Since you concede that there are romance novels and romance movies, you are admitting that there is a modern genre called romance. So, we have two genres called romance. Then we ask which is the more common usage. The answer, by far, is the modern use of a story with lots of romance in it, not the medieval epic adventure. "Romance" versus "romance novel" is a distinction that nearly no one would ever make, whatever version of romance they're talking about. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 13:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe its a question of language difference here. But the "-ic" ending is a particularly important distinction between a literary genre and a plain adjective. True, there is a "romance" (i.e. romantic engagement) between the two protagonists in the movie - as there is in most movies. But the movie is at best characterized as a "romantic movie" (or "romantic comedy"), not a "romance" (genre). It is in this latter sense (without the "-ic") that I have not seen cusomtarily characterized for such movies or books. It is an important distinction, and one would I would like more proof on. Walrasiad (talk) 16:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

There is a distinction between romance and romantic. But it's not a distinction that most of our readers will recognize. We don't write this for experts. We write this for people who aren't familiar with the topic. And our readers don't know that romance genre and romantic genre aren't the same thing. As a result, for the purpose of disambiguating, we need to treat romance and romantic as the same word (and we do, note the redirect romantic). As a result we have two genres called romance/romantic, and we need to choose which is primary, which is clearly the modern sense and not the medieval sense. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 04:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, this is an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are where people learn things. If some people aren't aware the romance genre is not the same as romantic novels or movies, then they'll learn it when they come here. Wikipedia will have done its job. I don't think we should arbitrarily decide that "romance" and "romantic" are the same thing. You have to first prove that "romance" is commonly used for the latter. And I am not persuaded that it is. Walrasiad (talk) 15:58, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

A popular line is called "Harlequin Romances", and the section you find them in, in atleast my local bookstores, is the "Romance" section (it says "Romance", not "Romantic"). So, the flowery books with Fabio on the cover written for women are "romance". 70.24.247.54 (talk) 06:08, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

• Support. The restriction of the genre Romance to chivalric romance is an esoteric one; Most people would expect the genre to include Romance novels and films. Yet another example of the way in which recognizable to readers (WP:AT of course) can conflict with consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources (ibid) when we restrict or bias these sources towards academic sources. Andrewa (talk) 10:36, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Inappropriate move

I see the move is done and dusted. The problem is that heroic literature and romance are different and in many ways contrasting genres. The article title is now positively misleading. --Pfold (talk) 09:35, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

So what romance isn't about a hero? Lancelot is certainly a flawed hero, but still a hero. According to Wiki's titling conventions, the title suggests that romance is a type of heroic literature, not that the two are the same thing. Kauffner (talk) 10:14, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

If you seriously think heroic literature means literature with a hero,... Romance is not a type of heroic literature. --Pfold (talk) 13:48, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, I would like to point out that Romance (genre) was not acceptable. After the move, I redirect Romance (genre) to Romance, and then upon reviewing link, found that over 50 links to Romance (genre) were not at all about heroic literature. Thus, having this article at Romance (genre) resulted in hundreds of pages linking to the wrong article. If you want to do another move, that's fine with me, but not to Romance (genre). D O N D E groovily Talk to me 16:58, 19 February 2012 (UTC) Is Romance (medieval literature) a good idea? D O N D E groovily Talk to me 16:59, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Pfold on this one. The title is at least possibly misleading, and I even wonder if the one who proposed it was confusing romance with chanson de geste. —Srnec (talk) 00:02, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

My basic plea is for a move to a title that is not factually incorrect. Romance (medieval literature) is fine if cumbersome. But I have to say I should like to see the vote challenged. This was a very marginal vote with low participation and the fact that it was for a move to a factually incorrect title undermines the entire article. If a vote is for something that is demonstrably wrong, then the votes in favour of it would lack credibility, even if they were much more numerous. ---09:20, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

"The half-tones of ordinary human nature are not for the romance writers; every man is either a hero and a good man, or a villain...Poetic justice reigns supreme throughout the romances." -- Essays On Middle English Literature. Kauffner (talk) 15:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms has a general entry on "romance" and subsidiary one on "chivalric romance". It says that "the emphasis on heterosexual love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic , in which masculine military heroism predominates." I won't say that "heroic literature" is wrong (every romance has a hero), but I think that "courtly literature", for example, would be better. Srnec (talk) 19:44, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

"Courtly" is fine. I suspect those who voted for heroic literature don't realize that it has a specific historical and genre meaning quite separate from the much broader concept of the hero. No medievalist would confuse the two. --Pfold (talk) 23:05, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 2

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move Lynch7 03:47, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

---

Romance (heroic literature) → Romance (courtly literature) — See the section immediately above for why I (and another) think this is a better option than the present. Basically, romance is often contrasted with literature that is more often labelled "heroic" than it. One of the defining aspects of romance that distinguishes it from medieval heroic genres is its "courtliness". Srnec (talk) 23:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose. "Courtly literature" is another name for Romance, so this is not a properly constructed disambiguator. The disabiguator should be a class that the subject is item within, or a subject or context. See WP:NCDAB. Kauffner (talk) 00:40, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
• Oppose. In fact Romance is used for other genres, even if the courtly romance may be the main one. The proper disambiguator is therefore genre. The earlier vote should simply be overturned, since it gave rise to an inaccurate use of terminology. --Pfold (talk) 09:44, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
  • After the previous move, I redirected Romance (genre) to the disambiguation page Romance. I then found 200 new links to this disambiguation page, and every single one was about modern romances and not a single one had anything to do with Medieval or Renaissance literature (these were all anime/manga articles). This means that before the move, the vast majority of links here should have linked elsewhere. This makes it obvious that this page is not the primary topic for Romance as a genre, and instead, the primary topic for Romance as a genre is the modern Romance novel and Romance film. D O N D E groovily Talk to me 16:48, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Well, Kauffner, if courtly literature is just another name for this type of romance, why not move to Courtly literature? (I'm no expert, I'm just suggesting ideas) D O N D E groovily Talk to me 03:15, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

This moving business is a disaster, and shows how RM is broken< inviting comments from random people on a topic they known nothing about will lead to some quick "consensus", and once the editors who developed the article come back and find what happened, they will be powerless to undo the damage, because, hey, there was a "consensus".

Just undo the ill-advised move and have a proper discussion, ok? "Romance (genre)" was about a million times preferable over "romance (heroic literature)" regardless of its possible drawbacks. Try to make this about the topic and not about being right or getting your way or justifying wiki-bureaucracy, please? --dab (𒁳) 08:47, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. The present disambiguator is so inappropriate it undermines the credibility of the article itself --Pfold (talk) 10:01, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Cut

I'm cutting this:

A related tradition existed in Northern Europe, and comes down to us in the form of epics, such as Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied. However, the richest set of Germanic literature of Romance comes from Scandinavia in the form of the legendary sagas. The setting is Scandinavia, but occasionally it moves temporarily to more distant and exotic locations (including Constantinople). There are also very often mythological elements, such as gods, dwarves, elves, dragons, giants and magic swords. The heroes often embark on dangerous quests where they fight the forces of evil, dragons, witchkings, barrow-wights, and rescue fair maidens.

on the ground that it's about epics, not romances. It needs to talk about what sort of influences they were on the later works to be appropriate. Goldfritha (talk) 02:46, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 3

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 08:55, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

---

Romance (heroic literature) → Chivalric romance – Natural disambiguation is to be preferred to parenthetical. Note also that the description of this genre as "heroic" is disputed (above). Srnec (talk) 22:00, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Survey

• Comment. "Medieval romance" outpaces "chivalric romance" on this ngram. See also The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance. Kauffner (talk) 06:58, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• That would also be an improvement and I'd support it. Srnec (talk) 21:24, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

• Wouldn't that ('medieval romance') be confusable with period romances set in the medieval period? -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 05:10, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

• Support "Chivalric romance" , though the current title also works -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 05:12, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

• Sounds OK. Can we work to categorise examples of the genre? I just read a few, and am not sure that "romance" is correct. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:09, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Medieval romance

Medieval romance redirects to Chivalric romance, but the term "medieval romance" is not introduced there as a synonym. I understand that both terms are used to disambiguate the term "romance", but the question remains: was there any kind of medieval romance other than chivalric romance? This article seems to say that at the very early times of the usage of the term "romans" there "romanses" were not necessarily chivalric and could include "free translations of Latin epics and chronicles", which, I guess, were far from "chivalric" - there were no chevaliers (knights) in Ancient Rome, right? Someone well-versed in literary lore, please update the article Chivalric romance with the clarification of the term "medieval romance", e.g., basing on the article I cited. Loew Galitz (talk) 04:26, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

" there were no chevaliers (knights) in Ancient Rome, right?" Is this a joke? The equites ("cavalrymen") of Rome are traditionally called "knights" in English. Dimadick (talk) 19:32, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Is this a joke back? Here is a concept for you to revisit: "anachronism". The English are particularly notorious for using their standard English words for everything superficially similar. My fav is the habit of calling African chieftains "kings". Loew Galitz (talk) 21:06, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

References