Romantic Fiction

Romantic fiction draws on imagination, historical memory, heightened feeling, and unusual encounters to expand the possibilities of narrative. Historical romance sets private loyalties within public events, while other stories test the boundary between expectation and experience. The period also includes writers whose restrained observation complicates a simple Romantic label, particularly Jane Austen's accounts of social judgment. Adventure, courtship, memory, and moral choice can therefore take very different forms. These works differ in their use of history, social observation, and extraordinary events, even when they belong to the same period.