ABSTRACT
This chapter explores complicate matters, although Johnson's criticism praises the novel, the 'comedy of romance', as a positive development away from the fantastic absurdities of 'heroic romance' in a manner already familiar in this study. Johnson playfully raises and thwarts the reader's expectations of the fantastic, slyly reinforcing the realism of his story even as he continues to make use of the exotic settings of the Oriental tale. The exoticism of the tale allows Johnson to make his pronouncements on human life, morality. As Johnson praises 'the comedy of romance' by comparing it to the defects of 'heroic romance', Hawkesworth defines the fantastic against the shortcomings of the realistic novel. As with his Oriental tale, Johnson's exception of 'wonders' from the 'Gothic romance' works against the received tradition of the genre. Instead of avoiding Horace Walpole's wild 'Gothick' form as established in The Castle of Otranto because of its excessive use of 'wonder'.
