Background

The history of English literature has noted so many great works of different types and genres. Among them are the heroic epic, chronicles, poetry, romance, drama, and novel. However, not all of those works still survive in the heart of nowadays common readers. Among those few survivors, romance and novel stand as two prominent genres of English literature which still remain powerful until nowadays.

Romance and novel are two different genres of prose, which are often mistakenly generalized as of the same type. Instead of grouping them in prose, many common readers call famous romance work such as King Arthur as a novel. Therefore, this paper is going to illuminate the differences between romance and novel and the power dominance in the society that has worked behind them and played a great role in shaping these two giants in literature genres.

In order to sharpen the analysis, two most prominent works of romance and early modern novel, which are Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Robinson Crusoe are taken as the sample analysis in this paper. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been well-known as the most popular work from the Medieval Romance despite of its anonymous writer, while Robinson Crusoe is known as one of the earliest major novels in English literature that its author Daniel Defoe is even called as the Father of English Novel. Considering those backgrounds, each of those works can be ensured as the most representative work of either romance or novel.

1. Introduction

Romance and novel were born in different periods in the English literature history. Charles Sear Baldwin notes in An Introduction to English Medieval Literature that the term ‘romance’ can be dated back to the ‘Medieval Era’ of literature in England, which covers the period during the twentieth to the fifteenth century of England[1]. He also writes if at that period, England was still organized according to the ‘feudal system’, in which only a small part of the society could enjoy the bliss of wealth. Among that small group of people from high class are the ‘king and his knights’, ‘gentry’, and ‘landlords’. Most of the citizens could not have much chance to improve their poor standard of living, but only depend on their landlords. That situation is somehow in contrast with the period that marks the beginning of novel, which is around the early eighteenth century in England. Jeremy Hawthorne in Studying the Novel argued that the birth of the novel in England is supported by ‘the rise of the middle-class’ and ‘capitalism’ in England (Hawthorne 2005, 25) The eighteenth century of England was the era when the middle-class people ruled and the power of the nobles was declining. In contrast to the nobles’ inherited wealth that kept declining for continuously being shared to their heirs, the middle-class people gained even more wealth from the rapid growth of industry and ‘capitalism’. With the wealth and education they got, the middle-class started to be the new dominant power in the society. Those two different dominant powers in the society of England have shaped two of the biggest literature genres, the romance and novel.

The different power dominance in the society also affects the works of literature. Ad W. Putter in An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet noted that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was ‘the most popular literature of entertainment for the higher strata of society’ in Medieval Age (Putter 1996, 38). Therefore, its characteristics were designed to entertain the people of the upper-class society of that period. Charles Sears Baldwin in An Introduction to English Medieval Literature identifies ‘three ideal motives of romance’ which includes ‘love’, ‘adventure’, and ‘chivalry’ (Baldwin 1922, 59). The term ‘love’ in Medieval Romance according to Baldwin has closer meaning to the attitude of ‘worshipping’. The central character in romance does not take ‘love’ as a trivial thing, but he takes it seriously by showing his loyalty to his lady. Besides of ‘love’, ‘adventure’ also becomes an important element in romance. The character in romance often has to go on an ‘adventure’ as a proof of his bravery. Another element of romance which is often called as the most significant one is the ‘chivalric values’. There is rule in romance that the central character in the story has to be a knight, and yet he cannot be just any knight. A knight in romance has to hold the ‘chivalric values’, which includes his ‘devotion to God, King, and his lady’ (ibid). Other than those qualities, Hawthorne also adds in Studying the Novel that romance often involves ‘supernatural elements’ (Hawthorne 2005, 15). The setting in romance is often imaginary and it often includes some imaginary characters such as giants or people with supernatural powers.

In opposition to such aristocratic values, the novel which is backed-up by the middle-class society celebrates its own values of individualism and ‘realism’. Ralph Fox in The Novel and the People notes how ‘capitalism’ has developed the value of ‘individualism’ among the modern society which is reflected in the novel (Fox 1979, 44). Robert Bocock in his text, Consumption, also argues how the capitalistic system, which has replaced the feudal system of earlier period, has forced the society to develop their sense of ‘individualism’ since they have to compete against another in whatever ways in order to win ‘profit’ (Bockock 1993, 11). Besides of ‘individualism’, Doreen Roberts writes in The Introduction and Notes of Robinson Crusoe that the new dominating middle-class society also supported the development of ‘realism’ in literature (Roberts 2000, XVII). The middle-class people do not have the same taste of literature with the aristocratic society. Instead of reading stories about chivalry, the middle-class people prefer to reading stories of their everyday lives, the stories of ordinary people which are reflected in the novel.

2. Content

2.1. The Characteristics of Medieval Romance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Among the famous stories of Arthurian romance in Britain is the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The story starts with an annual Christmas celebration held in King Arthur’s palace at Camelot. Along with King Arthur are his Knights of the Round Table, which include Sir Gawain. In the middle of the feast, they were stunned by the appearance of a knight with giant-like size and entirely green color. He comes to challenge the supposed valiant knights in Arthur’s court for a battle-axe game. He would give his axe to any knight who dares to take his challenge to strike him with it. Conversely, one year after that, the knight should come to see him to be stroked back with his axe. King Arthur never starts his feast before he sees a knightly deed in that annual celebration and yet none of his knights seems to dare to take that challenge. Arthur is about to take that challenge himself, but then Sir Gawain asks in high manner to replace him. So it happens that Sir Gawain throws the axe to the Green Knight and it cuts his head off. Strangely, the Green Knight is still alive and his body even takes his head back from floor.

One year after the challenge, Sir Gawain still keeps his promise to find the Green Knight and receive his fling of axe. In the middle of his journey, Gawain finds a beautiful castle and decides to stop by there. He is very welcomed by the lord and lady of the castle that he even stays there for four days. On his second day in the castle, the lord of the castle would like to for hunting and makes an agreement with Gawain that anything he gets in the forest would be given to Gawain and he expects Gawain to give him whatever he gets in the castle.  On the third day, when the lord of the castle goes for hunting, Sir Gawain is approached by the beautiful lady of the castle who asks him for a kiss. Gawain, who holds the chivalric value, gives the lady’s favor for a kiss. In the evening, Sir Gawain and the lord of the castle fulfill their promise. The lord of the castle gives the deer he gets from hunting and Gawain gives him a kiss for exchange, although he does not mention from whom he got the kiss from. On the second day of the hunting, Gawain gives two kisses he got from the lady of the castle in exchange for a boar the lord of the castle gets from hunting. On the third day, the lady of the castle offers Gawain a gold ring and a girdle. Gawain refuses the gold ring politely, but he accepts the girdle since it might save him from the Green Knight’s axe, then he gives the lady three kisses. Sir Gawain gives the lord of the castle three kisses in exchange for a fox, but he does not give the girdle to the lord. Sir Gawain soon leaves the castle for the Green Chapel. At the Green Chapel, the Green Knight is ready to strike him with his axe. The first and second strikes do not touch Gawain, but the third strike hurts Gawain’s skin at the neck. The Green Knight then reveals that he is actually the lord of the castle he visited and that he has asked his wife to test him during his stay at the castle. The failed two strikes of axe were to honor Gawain’s honesty when he fulfilled the agreement they made at the castle. However, the third strike leaves a scar on Gawain’s neck as a mark of his dishonesty in not telling him about the girdle. Sir Gawain returns to King Arthur’s palace. Gawain sees the girdle as a mark of shame, but the king takes it to honor Gawain.

The story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is dominated by the ‘aristocratic value’ which can be seen from its choice of character and the strong ‘chivalric values’. The story is circulated around the life of the noble people, the King and the noble people surround him. Sir Gawain himself is known as one of the Knights of the Round Table who serve the legendary King Arthur. Therefore, the conflicts presented in the story also goes not far from the issue of nobility. The major conflict fought by the major character here is about the contradicting ‘chivalric values’.

Sir Gawain’s ‘chivalric values’ is shown through his loyalty to his king, his faith in God, and his courteous behavior. Sir Gawain proves his ‘chivalric values’ at the first place by showing loyalty to his king. His loyalty to King Arthur is shown when he bravely takes the Green Knight’s challenge, although it might put his own life at cost. Not only being brave, Sir Gawain also shows his integrity as a knight by keeping his promise to see the Green Knight a year after. Besides of loyalty to the king, Gawain also shows his faith in God which is also shown through this verse:

…and all his trust upon earth was in the five wounds that Christ bare on the cross, as the Creed tells. And wherever this knight found himself in stress of battle he deemed well that he drew his strength from the five joys which the Queen of Heaven had of her Child.(……., 120)

The verse shows Sir Gawain’s devotion to God, which becomes one of the qualities, should be possessed by a knight according to the ‘chivalric values’. His quality as a good knight is once again proven through his faith when he prays to God for guidance before he finds the castle in the middle of the forest. Another chivalric quality is shown by Sir Gawain through his courteous manner. Gawain always speaks to his king with such a high manner that shows his honor to the king:

I beseech ye, my lord, let this venture be mine. Would ye but bid me rise from this seat, and stand by your side, so that my liege lady thought it not ill, then would I come to your counsel before this goodly court. (……, 118)

Gawain utters such long sentences just to tell the king that he would like to take the challenge for him. It shows that Gawain communicates his intention to his king with a very careful manner. He does not only use words which are necessary to convey the meaning, but he also minds to use some additional words to show politeness and honor to the king.

The major conflict of the story occurs when he meets the seduction from lady of the castle. The seduction from her makes Sir Gawain’s ‘chivalric values’ contradict toward each other. On one side, Gawain has to remain loyal to his king by showing his integrity as his knight, but on the other side, he also has an obligation to treat a lady nicely as in the chivalric value. Gawain then manages to keep up with both values, but finally fails when he priors his own safety above the chivalric values. Despite of keeping his honesty as a knight, Gawain chooses his own way for safety by accepting the girdle offered by the lady of the castle. He is proven to take the wrong choice at the end, because he would have to get a scar on his neck if only he still holds on to the chivalric codes.

The ideology in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight shows the strong value of the aristocratic society. The ‘chivalric values’ that involves one’s loyalty to the king is more prior than one’s individual choice. Such value also reflects the society among whom this genre emerges, who were dominated by the royalties.

2.2. The Characteristics of Novel in Robinson Crusoe

The novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe tells about the life of a middle-class young man from England named Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe has a deep passion to go on a voyage, but his intention is opposed by his father. His father believes that to stay in England as the middle-class people is the best way to live, that he insists Crusoe to stay. However, young Crusoe does not bother with his father’s advice. He decides to go on a voyage, which unexpectedly gives him several unfortunate experiences along the way. His ship is caught in bad weather and even pirated by the Turkish pirates who later take him as a slave. He manages to runaway and meets a kind Portuguese captain who takes him to Brazil with his ship. In Brazil, Crusoe takes part in the plantation business which earns him a lot of profit. However, he decides to leave it for another voyage. His voyage from Brazil leads him to a terrible shipwreck. He gets stranded in an isolated island and finds himself as the only person who survives from the tragedy. As he does not find anybody else in that island to help him, Crusoe has to rely on himself and Providence to keep survives. He manages to built his own shelter, cultivate crops, and develop a livestock to survive in the island. Crusoe has been living for about twenty years when he sees another set of footprint in the island. Later he finds that the footprint comes from the savage from another island. The island close to his is inhabited by the cannibals and savages. They would come once in a year to his island with a prisoner to be sacrificed in their ritual. Crusoe decides to save the savage prisoner he finds and named him Friday. He teaches Friday to speak English and about Christianity, and also asks Friday to call him Master. Crusoe and Friday have developed a good master and servant relation for about two years in the island, when they find three other prisoners brought by their neighboring cannibals to the island. Crusoe and Friday save those three prisoners that includes Friday’s father. Not long after, a European ship lands on their island. Crusoe outsmarts the captain so that he agrees to take Crusoe and Friday on a voyage with him back to England. In Europe, Crusoe finds himself gets wealthy from the land he bought in Brazil for plantation. As he goes back to England, he marries a woman and settles down.

Through his narrative in Robinson Crusoe, Defoe clearly illustrates novel as a genre which emerges from the new dominating middle-class society. Robinson Crusoe can even be seen as a text which celebrates the middle-class station of life. Such ideology is stated in the text especially in the opinion of Crusoe’s father:

He told me…that mine was the middle state, or what be called the upper station of low life, which he had found by long experience was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings, of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. (Defoe 2000, 2)

At the beginning of the novel, Defoe spares two long paragraphs only to describe the advantages of being a middle-class. It says that the hardships of life are mostly shared by the lower and upper class people that people should celebrate to become a part of the middle-class. Not only, being grateful for the middle-class position, but the text even ridicules the royalties by stating that, “…kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequences of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes (ibid).” Such opinion indicates the declining of the royalties’ position in the society in contrast to the uprising middle-class.

As novel emerges as the genre of the middle-class, ‘realism’ becomes an important element of it. Robinson Crusoe is also famous for the use of the so called ‘formal realism’. In the Introduction and Notes of Robinson Crusoe, Doreen Roberts quotes from Ian Watt to define the term ‘formal realism’ which he believes to begin in the early eighteenth century. He defines the term as a technique of using ‘smaller time-scale’ to give the detail descriptions of everyday life, with more ‘individualized character’ instead of the typical one, the ‘development of consciousness through memory and experience’, and the ‘concern with times, dates, and location’ (Roberts 2000, XVII).

From all of the ‘formal realism’ elements mentioned by Watt, Robinson Crusoe has the ‘smaller time-scale’ element, ‘individualized character’, ‘development of consciousness’, and precise ‘dates and location’. In short, Robinson Crusoe has all of the elements in ‘formal realism’. Robinson Crusoe is a highly individualized character. The character in Robinson Crusoe is no longer a noble knight with unclear identity, but an ordinary man from the middle-class with a specific birthplace and family history. Crusoe is told to be born in York, in the year 1632. His father is a foreign merchant from Bremen, who marries a York woman whose families are named Robinson (Defoe 2000, 1). Locations in the novel also are far from imaginary since they refer to real places such as St Martha, Alicant, and Brazil. The place ‘Santa Marta can be found on the Columbian Coast’, while ‘Alicante is located on the south-east coast of Spain’ (ibid, 241). Not only that, but the ‘smaller time-scale’ in the novel also allows the ordinary everyday details of living. One example of it is when Crusoe’s father calls him to his father’s room, Crusoe as the narrator in the story also mentions that his father suffers from ‘gout’, although such detail does not really contribute to the plot (ibid, 1). However, what might seem as an unimportant detail in the story can contribute to the effect of ‘realism’. The mentioning of ‘gout’ can make the readers from the eighteenth century of Britain identify the story with the reality of their everyday lives. Gout, in fact, is noted as a common disease in that era[2].

Another strong element of ‘formal realism’ in Robinson Crusoe is the ‘development of consciousness’. An interesting example of it, is found in Crusoe’s philosophical contemplation of human’s and God’s existence:

And what am I, and all the other creatures, wild and tame, human and brutal, whence are we? Sure we are all made by some secret Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky. And who is that? It is God that has made it all…And if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all this to befall me…Why has God done this to me? (Defoe 2000, 70)

The narration describes Crusoe’s flows of thoughts as he tries to find the reason of why he should undergo such a terrible situation of being stranded alone in a distant island. Such stream of consciousness can add the ‘realism’ effect because it makes the character as if he really is an autonomous individual just like in real, life where people have the capability to think and act according to his will, rather than just as a “puppet” moved by the author of the story.

Not only the character is individualized, the conflicts in the novel also often deal with individualism as it is reflected in Robinson Crusoe. The conflicts faced by Robinson Crusoe are mostly dealing with individualism. The first conflict in the novel happens between Crusoe and his father. He neglects his father advice that he has to be stranded in an island as the consequence. The major conflict opposes man with the nature, of how Crusoe should be able to become self-sufficient in such a harsh environment. Along the story, the narration puts more emphasize on Robinson Crusoe as an individual rather than his existence as a part of a social community. Even the closest human relation in this story, which is between Crusoe and Friday, is very dominated by Crusoe’s sense of individualism. It can be seen from the way he treats Friday as a servant rather than as equal humankind to be regarded as a friend. The name he gives to Friday is not even a proper name for human, but just a name of a day in a week. In short, this novel can be seen as the celebration of the individualism value.

The highly individualized character and individualism value can also be connected back to the society among whom the novel emerges. Jeremy Hawthorne in Studying the Novel writes how ‘capitalism’ has helped the development of ‘printing’ and ‘literacy’ among the eighteenth century middle-class people in Britain, but at the same time it has also developed ‘confrontations and rivalries among individuals’ (Hawthone 2005, 25). Not only that, but he also finds that ‘individualism’ is also supported by what he calls as the ‘urban experience’. The urbanization in the eighteenth century has created a new environment in which people no longer know the people surround them. Such environment creates a private life as a new lifestyle. It makes it even clearer that novel is shaped by the new dominating power in the society, the middle-class.

3. Conclusion

The dominant power in the society of each period has influenced romance and novel that they promote different characteristics and values. The genre of romance, which emerges under the domination of aristocratic authority, celebrates the ‘chivalric values’ and noble knights as heroes. As opposed to that, the novel appears as the genre of the new dominating middle-class people which celebrates the triumph of ordinary people as the ‘winner’ by holding on to ‘individualism’ as their value. The hero in novel is no longer a figure who strongly defends his commitment to other people, but one who manages to find his own way among the rigid social construction.

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[1] Book Title: An Introduction to English Medieval Literature. Contributors: Charles Sears Baldwin – author. Publisher: Longmans Green. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1922. Page Number: 70.

[2] The reigning queen of the early eighteenth century, Queen Anne, also died because of suppressed gout.