ABSTRACT
The most clearly-defined character of romance is the tyrant of the haunted castle, from whom the Byronic hero and the superman are gradually evolved. The outward apparition annexed later in their darker and more criminal days by the monk and the Byronic hero belonged originally to the young hero of Otranto, the brave Theodore. Despite the circumstance, the young hero and heroine of romance have an important part assigned to them, and cannot be summarily dismissed. The young hero visualized by Scott was not Southey’s theoretical ideal, but a being closer related to common mankind and thus more interesting. A recurrent feature of his prose romances is a division of his maidens into fair and dark types, a division perhaps more obvious than in the case of the young hero. The fact thus emerges that notwithstanding a certain tendency to recede into the background, the young hero and heroine represent an important side of the romantic author’s imaginary world.
