Transitions of Genre in the Long Restoration Period: From Romance to Novel. Introduction

Sonia Villegas-López

doi:10.14198/raei.33491

Authors

Sonia Villegas-López Universidad de Huelva, Spain https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9527-800X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.33491

Keywords:

English prose fiction, Restoration literature, Romance-to-novel transition, Literary genres, Seventeenth-century English literature

Abstract

The selection proposed in this special issue aims at offering a representative variety of approaches to the intricacies of genre in what we have referred to as “the long Restoration period,” which in practical terms starts slightly before the emblematic date of 1660 and ends in the early years of the eighteenth century. The eight articles this volume comprises are arranged both chronologically and thematically, advancing from studies about the form, function and scope of romance to the various shapes that “novels” and other related prose forms adopt in the period, while also accounting for European influences, mostly from the French and Spanish traditions.

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