Abstract
As a genre, romance lasts for thousands of years, and it has fixed narrative modes, characters and situations. However, the genre cannot be long-lasting by its stable structure, characters and situations alone. By re-examining the definition, history, classification and stylistic evolution of the genre, and by way of the theories of structuralist narratology, the paper summarizes three romance prototypes, namely, structure prototype, character prototype, and situation prototype, and it proceeds to demonstrate that the changing of "satellites" which breaks the readers' expectation on romance provides the readers with reading pleasure. This explains the high popularity of romance since 12th century. The paper also maintains that the three types of prototypes may help to reveal readers' cognitive processes of romance narration.
First Page
189
Last Page
196
Recommended Citation
Li, Limin. 2015. "A Study of the Prototypes of Romance." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 35, (2): pp.189-196. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol35/iss2/2
