the other hand, for the last hundred years and more, there have been some who have seen in romance almost the highest and certainly the most charming form of fictitious creation, the link between poetry and religion, the literary embodiment of men's dreams and desires, the appointed nepenthe of more sophisticated ages as it was the appointed pastime of the less sophisticated. Between these opposites there is of course room for many middle positions, but few of these will be occupied safely and inexpugnably by those who do not take heed of the following conclusions.
Romance, beyond all question, enmeshes and retains for us a vast amount of story-material to which we find little corresponding in ancient literature. It lays the foundation of modern prose fiction in such a fashion that the mere working out and building up of certain features leads to, and in fact involves, the whole structure of the modern novel (q.v.). It antiquates (by a sort of gradual “taking for granted”) the classical assumption that love is an inferior motive, and that women, though they “may be good sometimes” are scarcely fit for the position of principal personages. It helps to institute and ensure a new unity—the unity of interest. It admits of the most extensive variety. It gives a scope to the imagination which exceeds that of any known older literary form. At its best it embodies the new or Christian morality, if not in a Pharisaic yet in a Christian fashion, and it establishes a concordat between religion and art in more ways than this. Incapable of exacter definition, inclining (a danger doubtless as well as an advantage) towards the vague, it is nevertheless comprehensible for all its vagueness, and, informal as it is, possesses its own form of beauty—and that a precious one. These characteristics were, if perceived at all by its enemies in the period above referred to, taken at their worst; they were perceived by its champions at the turn of the tide and perhaps exaggerated. From both attitudes emerged that distinction between the “classic” and the “romantic” which was referred to at the beginning of this article as requiring notice before we conclude. The crudest, but it must be remembered the most intentionally crude (for Goethe knew the limitations of his saying), is that “Classicism is health; Romanticism is disease.” In a less question-begging proposition of single terms, classicism might be said to be method and romanticism energy. But in fact sharp distinctions of the kind do much more harm than good. It is true that the one tends to order, lucidity, proportion; the other to freedom, to fancy, to caprice. But the attempt to reimpose these qualities as absolutely distinguishing marks and labels on particular works is almost certain to lead to mistake and disaster, and there is more than mere irony in the person who defines romance as “Something which was written between an unknown period of the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, and which has been imitated since the later part of the 18th century.” What that something really is is not well to be known except by reading more or less considerable sections of it—by exploring it like one of its own forbidden countries. But something of a sketch-map of that country has been attempted here.
To illustrate and reinforce the above, see in the first place articles on the different national literature's, especially French and Icelandic; as also the following:—
Classical or Pseudo-Classical Subjects.—Apollonius of Tyre; Longus; Heliodorus; Apuleius; Troy; Thebes; Caesar, Julius; Alexander the Great; Hercules; Jason; Oedipus; Virgil.
Arthurian Romance.—Arthur; Gawain; Perceval; Lancelot; Merlin; Tristan; Round Table; Grail; and the articles on romance writers such as Malory, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Chrétien de Troyes, Gottfried of Strassburg, &c.
French Romance.—Charlemagne; Guillaume d'Orange; Doon de Mayence; Ogier the Dane; Roland; Renaud de Montauban (Quatre fils Aymon); Huon of Bordeaux; Girard de Roussillon; Amis et Amiles; Macaire; Partonopeus de Blois; Robert the Devil; Flore and Blanchefleur; Garin le Loherain; Raoul de Cambrai; Guillaume de Palerme; Adenès le Roi; Benoît de Sainte-More, &c.,
Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Danish, English Romance.—Bevis of Hampton; Horn; Havelok; Guy of Warwick; Robin Hood; Maid Marian.
German.—Nibelungenlied; Ortnit; Dietrich of Bern; Wolfdietrich; Heldenbuch; Waltharius; Gudrun; Hildebrand, Lay of; Ruodlieb.
Northern.—Sigurd; Wayland; Hamlet; Edda.
Spanish.—Amadis de Gaula.
Various.—Reynard; Roman de la Rose; Griselda and kindred stories; Geneviève of Brabant; Gesta Romanorum; Barlaam and Josaphat; Seven Wise Masters; Maeldune, Voyage of.
Authorities.—The first modern composition of importance on romance (putting aside the dealings of Italian critics in the 16th century with the question of romantic v. classical unity) is the very remarkable dialogue De la Lecture des vieux romans written by Chapelain in mid-17th century (ed. Feillet, Paris, 1870), which is a surprising and thoroughgoing defence of its subjects. But for long afterwards there was little save unintelligent and mostly quite ignorant depreciation. The sequence of really important serious works almost begins with Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762). In succession to this may be consulted on the general subject (which alone can be here regarded) the dissertations of Percy, Warton and Ritson; Sir Walter Scott, “Essay on Romance” in the supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1816-24); Dunlop, History of Fiction (1816, to be usefully supplemented and completed by its latest edition, 1888, with very large additions by H. Wilson); Wolff, Allgemeine Geschichte des Romans (Jena, 1841-50); Ward, Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum (vol. i. 1883, vol. ii. 1893) (the most valuable single contribution to the knowledge of the subject); G. Saintsbury, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Edinburgh, 1897), and its companion volumes in Periods of European Literature [W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages (1904); Snell, The Fourteenth Century (1899); Gregory Smith, The Transition Period (1900); Hannay, The Later Renaissance (1898)]; W. P. Ker, Epic and Romance (1897).
- (G. Sa.)
ROMANCE LANGUAGES, the name generally adopted for the modern languages descended from the old Roman or Latin tongue, acted upon by inner decay or growth, by dialectic variety, and by outward influence, more or less marked, of all the foreign nations with which it came into contact.
During the middle ages the old Roman Empire or the Latin-speaking world was called Romania, its inhabitants Romani (adj. Romanicus), and its speech Romancium, Vulgar Romancio, Italian Romanzo, from Romanice loqui = to speak Romance; in Old French nominative romanz, objective roman(t), Modern French roman, “a novel,” originally a composition in the vulgar tongue. In English some moderns use Romanic (like Germanic, Teutonic) instead of Romance; some say Neo-Latin, which is frequently used by Romance-speaking scholars. By successive changes Latin, a synthetical language, rich in inflexions, was transformed into several cognate analytical tongues of few inflexions, most of the old forms being replaced by separate form-words. As the literary language of the ancient Roman civilization died out, seemingly extinguished by the barbarism of the middle ages, all the forms of the old classical language being confounded in the most hopeless chaos, suddenly new, vigorous and beautiful tongues sprang forth, ruled by the most regular laws, related to, yet different from, Latin. How was this wonderful change brought about? How can chaos produce regularity? The explanation of this mystery has been given by Diez, the great founder of Romance philology. The Romance languages did not spring from literary classical Latin, but from popular Latin, which, like every living speech, had its own laws, not subject to the changing literary fashions, but only to the slow process of phonetic change and dialectic variety. It is interesting to observe that much that is handed down to us in the oldest Latin literature (notably in the vocabulary) reappears in the most recent phase of Latin—the Romance languages. Thus, a verb nivĕre, “to snow,” is known to Pacuvius, but does not again appear until the time of Venantius Fortunatus, and then with a change of conjugation—nivēre, while it has now a new term of life in French and Rhaeto-Romanic dialects. It is obvious that there was no break of continuity in the vulgar language, for if in the later imperial ages a verb had been formed from nix, nivis, it must have been nivare, or niviare (Fr. neiger). Here especially the words of Horace come true:—
| “ | Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere, cadentque |
| Quae nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, | |
| Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.” |
