Understanding romance

1
Understanding romance - The Winters Tale
and The Tempest
Chapter 10
1_ ?? Romance? ??
2_ Romance and gender
(The Winters Tale)
2
Romance

• John Fletcher
• The Faithful Shepherdess (1960)
• tragicomedy genre

Influenced to Shakespeares 4 play
The Tempest
The Winters Tale
Pericles
Cymbeline
3
Romance
The term of Romance
First it is used to refer to Old French poems
that told tales of daring deeds done by the
knights of King Arthur or the heroes of Greek and
Roman mythology.
Later it became the name for tales about heroes
on quests in which magic would lead to a happy
resolution.
In Shakespeares plays the protagonists must
travel, be shipwrecked, or be lost. The movement
of the plot is from sorrow to joy, from division
to unity.
4
Romance
In Shakespeares Romances the role of children is
to make good the errors of their parents and
bring harmony where once was discord. The loves
of Perdita and Florizel in The Winters Tale, and
of Miranda and Ferdinanad in The Tempest, are the
means by which the courts of Sicilia and Bohmia,
Milan and Napeles, are reconciled.
5
Romance and gender
Two types of woman in the tragedies the chaste
and virtuous vs. the sensual and untrustworthy.
more obvious
Two archetypes of femininity in romances the
submissive and chaste wife/daughter
vs. the garrulous, sexually promiscuous,
harridan.
Archetypes
6
Romance and gender
Hermione
Paulina
Shows great patience and composure Obeys his
command and goes meekly to jail
Speak out against the kings absurd
accusations She is treated as bawd, witchcraft
It is the Paulinas actions and words that are
the agents of renewal and harmony. She
brings harmony and reconciliation to Leontes
court.
The Winters Tale
7
Romance and gender

• Early modern English society patriarchal
  society
• Male power over women rested partly on their
  physical ability.
• wonans poor revenge/Which dwells but in
  the tongue
• 
  (Webster 1972 III2 285-6)
• 3. Female sexuality was a powerful threat to
  men.
• As a result, womans talking should be
  controlled under patriarchy and their chastity
  was the principal female virtue.

8
Romance and gender

• Summery
• Women and their relationships with men are
  central to these plays.
• Though women are seen either as unruly and
  uncontrollable individuals, or as beautiful and
  fertile objects to be possessed, they possess
  qualities that will make the world better,
  because they save men from the harshness ad
  injustice of the masculine desire for power and
  control.

9
THANK YOU !
Shakespeare
2007. 11. 22