The associations I have with romance There are many meanings about the word romance. According to the materials checked from the web, romance is a word first used for French in many centuries ago as a language derived from Latin or Roman to distinguish it from Latin itself. This meaning has now been extended, so that the language proximately derived from Latin are called Romance languages. Later the term romance was applied to any work written in French, and as stories of knights and their chivalric deeds were a dominant form of old French literature. The world romance was applied to such stories. The first old romance were translated from Latin. And the meaning of medieval romance is different. Medieval romances are tales of adventure in which knights, kings, or distressed ladies, acting under the impulse of love, religious faith, or the mere desire for adventure. The medieval romance appears in French literature in 12th century that took the place of the older chanson of epic form. The differences between epic and romance are as follows. The epic reflects an heroic age. Whereas the romance reflects a chivalric. The epic has weight and solidity, where as the romances exhibits mystery and fantasy. The epic dose not much stress rank or social distinctions, but it is important in the romance. The tragic seriousness of the epic is not matched in the lighter-hearted romance. The heroic figures of the epic are more consistently conceived than the heros of romance. The epic heroes aim at higher achievement, but the heroes in romances is usually satisfied with more or less aimless adventures. The epic observes narrative unity, whereas the structure of the romance is loose. Love is usually absent or of minor interest in the epic, whereas it is supreme in the romances. Epic fighting is serious and well- motivated, whereas fighting in the romances is spontaneous. The epic uses the dramatic method of having the characters speak for themselves, whereas the reader of a romance is kept conscious as a narrator. When I imagine a story of romance, I like their life and the form of in medieval times. I feel that really great love stories could occur in that age, but it is much harder in nowadays. At that time knights and chivalry need to take adnventures and risk real dangers. Their life is more laborious, and they may be more close to the wilderness and nature. Thus, the heroes are motivated to be more daring and valiant, and the lovers of heroes' also need to endure a lot of sufferings and hardships. Love between two which occurs in that condition would be greater for them because they must have countless memories. In comparison with nowadays, the fabricated romances are not romantic. There is full of craftiness and hypocrisy. I feel that the bad writers of modern romances try to enlighten us that the love between a beautiful and a handsome or a born wealthy guy is romatic; if not, the full situation and all thoughts, efforts, and emotions in love are totally obsolete and in vain. I don't have clearly read a lot of epics or romances, because I am not a student majoring in literature acdemic now. After finished finding some informations from the websites, I have understood a little about the difference between romance and epic and the real meanings of both of the two, and I also feel happy for the boost to my p-dollar counts after this article. Nowadays general people and students often think of the the meaing of the word romance as those imaginary love stories about girl and boy or man and women fabricated with commonplace plots for general public, such as those works discussed in PTT Romances board. I don't like to read this kind of works, because those stories are too fuctitious. After finished reading a story of this kind, I may feel I acquire nothing from it. Those novels and short stories of romance now are usually composed for catering to the wishful thinking of some readers, mainly teen girls. Without any proficiency in literature, I can still feel that these vulgar love stories are of little or no literary values. The literature books displayed in bigger chain bookstores are mostly by far more precious than the books in novel stores. --

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