V.V. (1) novel v. romance

[jbor]

William Congreve, in the preface to his first novel entitled *Incognita: or,
Love and Duty Reconciled* (1692), distinguishes between the two literary
forms:

   Romances are generally composed of the Constant Loves and invincible
   Courages of Hero's, Heroins, Kings and Queens, Mortals of the first Rank,
   and so forth; where lofty Language, miraculous Contingencies and
   impossible Performances, elevate and surprize the Reader into a giddy
   Delight, which leaves him flat upon the Ground whenever he gives of, and
   vexes him to think how he has suffer'd himself to be pleased and
   transported, concern'd and afflicted at the several Passages which he has
   Read, viz. these Knights Success to their Damosels Misfortunes, and such
   like, when he is forced to be very well convinced that 'tis all a lye.
   Novels are of a more familiar nature; Come near us, and represent to us
   Intrigues in practice, delight us with Accidents and odd Events, but not
   such as are wholly unusual or unpresidented, such which not being so
   distant from our Belief bring also the pleasure nearer us. Romances give
   more of Wonder, Novels more Delight.

The "us" Congreve refers to here is undoubtedly the educated middle class
(he was later to become a fervent supporter of the Whigs), and is somewhat
emphatically male. He concludes his Preface with the following:

    I have gratified the Bookseller in pretending an occasion for a Preface;
    the other two Persons concern'd are the Reader and my self, and if he be
    but pleased with what was produced for that end, my satisfaction follows
    of course, since it will be proportion'd to his Approbation or Dislike.

Interesting to note also that while the public celebrity Pynchon shuns is
one of the most egregious hazards of bourgeois literary culture, the privacy
he craves is equally one of its innovations and perhaps its greatest luxury.

best


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>From: jporter <jp4321 at IDT.NET>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: V.V. (1) Picaresque novel
>Date: Wed, Oct 11, 2000, 2:24 PM
>

>
>
>> From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
>>
>> The housebound woman living vicariously through pulp romances is a
>> gratuitous and patronising (male) stereotype which doesn't have much
>> significance for historical actuality in any era, I would imagine, Emma
>> Bovary notwithstanding.
>>
>
> I don't know whether the people who read *pulp romances* are housebound,
> whether they are primarily living vicariously through them, or whether they
> are the victims of gratuitous and patronizing male stereotyping- or if they
> care. I do know that according to one survey 40 million people in America
> read at least one of this genre in the past year, and, apparently 9% of
> those readers were men.
>
> Obviously the genre is flourishing. What are its sources? Is it unrelated to
> the picaresque, an offshoot, or are they both the descendants of some common
> ancestral prototype, less secular perhaps?