Historical fiction and romance

For some reason, the terms ‘romance’ and ‘romantic fiction’ frequently have derogatory tones. This was commented on in the first episode of the BBC4 series on romantic fiction Reader, I Married Him [link], and is a regular source of comment and debate around the net.

Why does the term ‘romance’ have such a bad image? Snobbery, sexual stereotyping and prejudice are frequently cited. These have been cogently argued against elsewhere (e.g. Alyssa Goodnight, Grumpy Old Bookman, Romancing the Blog, to name but a few), and I have no more to add.

I wonder if part of the problem is one of definition. ‘Romance’ means different things to different people. In the workshop televised on Reader, I Married Him, I thought it was notable that each of the participants had their own idea of what constituted romance. My edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary offers the following two definitions that could apply to modern fiction:

A) prose or rarely verse tale with scene and incidents remote from everyday life, class of literature consisting of such tales;
B) love affair viewed as resembling tale of romance; love-story.

Now, these two definitions give me quite a different impression of the likely contents of a book. Sense A is romance in the sense that the film El Cid is a romance, in the sense that H. Rider Haggard, John Buchan and Sir Walter Scott wrote romance, and in the sense that Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series, CS Forester’s Hornblower series and the James Bond franchise are romances. One might also use terms like ‘swashbuckler’, ‘derring-do’ or ‘adventure’ to describe them, or variants on ‘cracking yarn’. There may or may not be a love story in the plot, but if one is present there will certainly be a great many other things going on in the book as well, and the characters will be concerned with other activities and desires besides their relationship. This sense of ‘romance’ was in common use in the 1960s, when Hodder & Stoughton described John Buchan’s novels as romances in the jacket copy of Greenmantle, but is less common now.

Sense B is the more usual current sense. There seem to be numerous subtle gradations within it, e.g. the recent discussion here about historical romance versus romantic historical. I make the distinction on the basis of the relative importance of the love story relative to the setting and the rest of the plot. So:

• historical fiction - may or may not have a romantic relationship as part of the plot, but if present the love story is a part of the plot and not the dominant element. Setting and historical events are vital to the plot, and character, motivation and incident feel as though they belong to that particular time and place.


• romantic historical - a romantic relationship is a key part of the plot, but other elements of the plot are also important. Setting is important and character, motivation and incident are credible for the period.


• category romance - a romantic relationship is the dominant feature in the plot, with any other plot elements and other characters being absent or secondary. Their relationship is the most important thing in the lives of the hero and heroine, and there will be a ‘happy-ever-after’ ending when they are happily mated. Credibility of setting, motivation, character, incident and plot are optional.

I don’t put these forward as hard and fast definitions. For one thing, they are nothing like specific enough to be useful except at the most generalised level. I do think they illustrate the pitfalls of discussing ‘romance’ without defining the term. Looseness of definition can easily slip into a circular argument: romances are all trash; Book X is good; therefore Book X is not a romance. Or, from the other side: Book X is good; Book X has a love story in it and that makes it a romance; therefore romances are not trash. Just alter the definition until it fits the argument. Other ‘genres’, such as historical fiction, crime fiction, science fiction, etc can be treated the same way. Books that the commentator likes (and are therefore ‘good’) do not belong to the genre being condemned, whereas books that the commentator doesn’t like (and are therefore trash), do.

What do you think?