ABSTRACT
Historical romance, with its links with both ‘history’ and the novel, is a genre in which two systems of myth operate: the archetypal episodes of romance, which in themselves are part of the semiological system described by Barthes in Mythologies,1 and the presentation of history. These systems operate concurrently, one sometimes supporting and confirming, sometimes undermining, the messages of the other. The reader is not necessarily aware of such contradictions, however, because to receive the message of the text she or he has to ‘read’ its structures, and these enable a variety of information to be carried without unduly exposing any inconsistency. In this chapter, the ways in which the structures of historical romance allow this to happen will be explored.
