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Elizabethan Romance
Author(s) -
Salter David
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2004.00026.x
Subject(s) - romance , arcadia , narrative , reign , literature , popularity , context (archaeology) , history , period (music) , politics , chivalry , art , law , aesthetics , archaeology , political science
In many ways, romance is a frustratingly imprecise literary term. However, whatever the difficulties involved in defining what a romance actually is, there are, nonetheless, characteristic features that are shared by all romance narratives, including those produced during the Elizabethan period. This article first examines those narrative conventions and story elements that Elizabethan romances have in common with the corpus as a whole, before going on to identify their distinguishing features. The continuing popularity of medieval romance, and the powerful influence it exerted on Elizabethan authors, is also explored and assessed. Finally, close readings of two reasonably representative romances from the period – Richard Johnson's The Seven Champions of Christendom and Sir Philip Sidney's The Old Arcadia – are provided. The two texts are placed in the context of the social, political, and cultural changes that overtook England during the second half of the sixteenth century, and these points of reference are used to understand the development of the romance form during Elizabeth I's reign.