Quote:
Originally Posted by kazbates
Why are Romances distinguished from novels? The definition of a novel is: A fictional prose narrative of considerable length, typically having a plot that is unfolded by the actions, speech, and thoughts of the characters. How is a romance different from this?
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The general viewpoint seems to be that it's about the portrayal of characters. Novels have "realistic" characters in them, while romances have characters, yes, but they are not portrayed in a realistic manner. Read Richardson's "Pamela" or Fielding's "Tom Jones" and you feel that real people are being described. There are no such "people" in Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur".
All this is a highly debatable issue, of course, but the definitions are not mine, but those of the academic world. All I know is that, when I recently did a course on "The English Novel", our lecturer said that Richardson's "Pamela" was widely considered to be the first "true" novel, and that earlier works, such as "Robinson Crusoe", were not.