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Definition: Romance from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary

pronunciationpronunciation

(1690) : of, relating to, or being any of the languages developed from Latin (as Italian, French, and Spanish)

romance

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
In literature, tales of love and chivalric adventure, in verse or prose, that became popular in France about 1200 and spread throughout Europe. It had antecedents in many works from classical antiquity, but developed as a distinctive genre in the context of the aristocratic court. Masters of the 13th century romance include Chrétien de Troyes and Benoit de Sainte-Maure in France and Gottfried von Strassburg in Germany. In the 15th and 16th centuries, prose overtook verse as the preferred form for the romance. There were Arthurian romances about the legendary King Arthur and his knights (for example, English writer Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur ), and romances based on the adventures of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne along with a number of romances concerned spiritually with the adventures of English heroes such as Richard Coeur de Lion (Richard Lionheart). Many romances took classical themes and some were adapted from the work of Latin poets, including Roman de Thèbes ( c. …
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Full text Article romance

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
American popular romance has its roots in 18th-and 19th-c. British fiction, most notably novels such as Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice , Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre , and British Gothic works such as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolfo . However, from the very beginning, American romance has…
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Full text Article romance

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
The term “romance,” which initially merely signified that a work was written in French as opposed to Latin, and which, to a medieval audience, promised tales of great adventure and derring-do, has eventually come to be opposed to REALISM and is now applied to prose fictions that represent characters…
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Full text Article ROMANCE

From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
As with so many genres with a long history of usage, musical works with the title Romance have been characterized by changes of type and function, not only over time, but in different countries and areas, and according to whether they were free-standing pieces or components of larger groupings. The…
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History As film stars are among the world's most beautiful people, it is surely appropriate that they should be shown to fall in love with one another for our viewing pleasure. This is the essential appeal of the big-screen romance, a genre in which emotional resonance is more of a priority than…
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Full text Article romance

From Word Origins
A romance is etymologically a story written in the language ‘of Rome’. The word comes from Old French romanz , which denoted ‘something written in French (as opposed to classical Latin)’. This went back to the Vulgar Latin adverb * rōmānicē ‘in the local vernacular descended from Latin’ (contrasted…
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Full text Article Romance

From The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory Full text Article Cultural Theory
“Romance” refers to the mass-market popular fiction written primarily by and for women that constitutes 50 percent of the American paperback fiction market. It typically revolves around a central romantic relationship, usually between a hero and a heroine, and requires an emotionally uplifting and…
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Full text Article romance

From Encyclopedia of American Literature Full text Article Volume 2
Many of the novels written in the first half of the nineteenth century were billed as romances. The term arose in Europe during the Middle Ages, when it described lengthy compositions in prose or in verse delivered in one of the Romance languages. Later the term was applied to works of fiction…
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Full text Article romance

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
a. A love affair: His romance with her lasted only a month. b. Ardent emotional attachment or involvement between people; love: They kept the romance alive in their marriage for 35 years. c. A strong, sometimes short-lived attachment, fascination, or enthusiasm for something: a childhood romance…
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Full text Article ROMANCE

From The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
(Sp., ballad ). The romance is the simplest and most common fixed form in Sp. poetry. It is usually written in octosyllabic verse in which the even lines assonate alike and the odd-numbered are left free. In the romance doble , the odd-numbered lines have one assonance and the even-numbered another. …
| 625 words
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Full text Article romance

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
In literature, tales of love and chivalric adventure, in verse or prose, that became popular in France about 1200 and spread throughout Europe. It had antecedents in many works from classical antiquity, but developed as a distinctive genre in the context of the aristocratic court. Masters of the…
| 322 words
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