Abstract:What is the difference between epic and romance? Spenser did not use either term and contemporaries who did gave varying accounts. Since the late 1970s, epic has been associated with Virgil and closur...What is the difference between epic and romance? Spenser did not use either term and contemporaries who did gave varying accounts. Since the late 1970s, epic has been associated with Virgil and closure, romance with Ovid and digression. Today the conventional wisdom is that Ovid was an anti-Virgil; that he furnished Spenser with a model for honorable exile; and that he licensed a style of narrative, romance, in which endings are deferred indefinitely. The evidence for this view needs to be reexamined. Is our reading of Ovid sentimental? Was Ireland, for Spenser, a place of exile or, as Jean Brink has argued, preferment? What did commentators say about Ovid’s conclusion? Finally, is it true that romance, as a genre, is more open-ended than epic? What was the practice of romance authors, and how was it theorized by literary critics?Read More
Publication Year: 2008
Publication Date: 2008-06-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 6
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