ABSTRACT
The marvellous seemed to seventeenth – and eighteenth-century critics to be the distinguishing mark of the romance. The words 'romance' and 'romantic' are closely connected. In English and German eighteenth-century usage, 'romantic' still means essentially something that could happen in a romance. From the Romantic period onwards writers more and more abandon the article before 'romance'. Romance has become a literary quality rather than a form and it is frequently set against 'reality' in literary argument. The critical argument between the claims of 'realism' and 'romance' in the later nineteenth century exaggerated the contrast between the two modes and its attempt to establish them as separate categories was bound to fail for all but a very few works. In the twentieth century the conflict between 'romance' and 'realism' has lessened because writers have emphasized the extent to which each man carries within him an obscure and separate universe.
