novelistsonnovel00allo

:
THE NATURE OF PROSE FICTION
which was to look with a more dispassionate eye on Epic and
Romance and was gradually to become familiar with the idea
that a novel could be an organized structure, different in kind
from either. There is still little sign of this equiUbrium in Clara
Reeve's The Progress ofRomance, published five years after Alwyn,
but she uses 'the Novel' as a term indicating a particular literary
kind with a fresh note of confidence
The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times
in which it is written. The Romance in lofty and elevated language,
describes what never happened nor is likely to happen. The Novel
gives a familiar relation of such things as pass every day before our
eyes. . .
.^
Clara Reeve's discussion of the 'Progress of Romance' reflects
a mood that makes itself increasingly felt throughout the later
eighteenth century. Her study owes a good deal, as she admits,
to earher commentators. Hurd, Beattie, Percy and Mallet are
all acknowledged or drawn on and it is obviously of importance
to her that these writers, in their enthusiasm for the 'romantic',
seek to establish the continuity of romantic fantasy from the
classical stories and the Eastern tales to the days of chivalry and
beyond. Without their specialized knowledge, she nevertheless
makes a brave effort to cut her own path through the tangled
undergrowth of story-telling from Homer to her own times,
enlivening her argument by casting it into the form of a dialogue
between three characters. The chief of these, Euphrasia, who
speaks for the author, maintains that
Homer was the parent of Romance; where ever his works have been
known, they have been imitated by the Poets and Romance writers.
—I look upon Virgil as the most successful of his Imitators, ^
Hortensius, who represents a more orthodox view, objects that
'this is what I call degrading both these divine men',^ but
Euphrasia is undeterred. 'I venerate Homer as much as one unlearned
in his own language can do', she allows, but roundly
claims that there is little to choose between him and the author
of Sinbad the Sailor's adventures. Both show 'variety of characters',
both relate 'marvellous adventures', and in the history of
^ See below, p. 47.
^ See The Progress of Romance, Vol. I. p. 19.
3 Ibid.
14