The Good of Romance

Escapist fare can lead to good

The Promise and Peril of Romance

What good can come of Romance, those tales that are larger than life, that speak of heroes in far-off lands and times?

There is surely the potential for ill to come of Romance. For the hours we spend to ponder the unreal must be robbed from the time we spend in dealing with the real. Therefore the utilitarian good of listening to tales of Romance can only lie in the benefits we gain in coming ‘back’ out of the lands of Romance to our real lives. I would list the benefits so:

1. Refreshment
2. Enthusiasm for life
3. Encouragement to take up life’s struggle
4. Hope that the end will bear its reward
5. Greater-than-moral patterns to live by
6. Perspective on life

Refreshment

The Refreshment we can win from Romance is like that which we win from any well-told tale. To the extent that a Romance lightens our hearts and offers a holiday from the toil of our daily work, it lets us return to living with renewed energy, just like any entertainment.

Enthusiasm

The Enthusiasm we can gain from Romance comes from what is peculiar to Romance, that heightened sense of adventure, struggle, conflict, and the sense of glory we feel from such high concerns. The struggles in tales of Romance always matter because the stakes are so high and the sacrifices are always worthwhile. The heroes of Romance embody in some form our best values, and when we hearken to a Romance, and see ourselves either as acting in the skin of the heroes or as tagging along with them, taking their part, rooting for them and fighting alongside them, we see ourselves as heroic and larger than life. To be sure, when we take such a view back to our daily life we face pitfalls, and may think too much of ourselves. We may judge ourselves too harshly when we fail in our tasks to live up to the deeds of our heroes of Romance. But for a time at least when we first emerge from a Romance, we feel a heightened sense of enthusiasm for tackling our own problems.

Encouragement

The Encouragement that Romance can offer us is related to the Enthusiasm we feel. Romance not only tells us that life is worth living, and the struggle worthwhile, it also fires us up to take on the struggle of our own lives. A hero of Romance is a man of action first and foremost. He does things. A tale of Romance lists the actions the hero undertakes toward the winning of his goal; the scenes are pared to what advances or hinders the hero, and nothing extraneous is left in. The Romance is a tale of things that happened rather than a remembrance of a fallen hero, for even when a Romance takes the shape of the remembrance, what is being remembered is not the character of the hero per se but rather his character in terms of what he did to win his high status. We remember him for what he did and this is almost always framed in terms of how he came to achieve his great goals. Thus, when we leave a Romance, we look on our life as a tale of deeds we must do to gain our own goals.

Hope

The Hope we win from Romance comes from its ending, which falls into one of two sorts:

1. Winning it all
2. Winning what is most important though at a great price

The Hero of Romance gets what he wanted. The Romance ends with the winning of the goal the hero sought. Sometimes the hero is left mostly unscathed in the struggle, he lives and is strong to fight another battle. Sometimes the hero falls in the struggle — but in his fall the hero ensures that the goal is won for others. He remains true to his values and the end of his travail is always to the good.

Patterns to Live By

A Hero of Romance also offers us a Pattern by which we may live our own lives. This Pattern is moral but it goes beyond morality. The morality the Hero embodies may not be our complete moral code, and the Hero may indeed break many of our ethics only to underscore how the values he clings to are the main ones, the most important. (It is in this sense that Jack Bauer, the hero of the television series 24, is a Hero of Romance, though he is a murderer and torturer and lawbreaker, and in real life should be judged guilty of his crimes and imprisoned for life … if any bars could hold him.) This Pattern is detailed in the hero’s specific actions in concrete situations and scenes. The Romance is not an Allegory, though some Allegories can take the shape of Romance. The two forms are not mutually exclusive. But what we seek in Romance is action, not parable, and we want to believe that it is or could be or should be in a greater sense, ‘real life.’ Aristotle said it was ‘life as it could be and ought to be.’ The great value of the Romance here is our very confounding of reality and fantasy, and the way we are wont to view ourselves as heroes of Romance when we go about our daily chores. ‘What would the hero do here?’ is the question that gives us a concrete, immediate answer that does not need to be reasoned out the way we must often reason out the proper behavior from abstract principles and ethical codes.

Perspective

Last, the Romance offers us when we leave it, a Perspective on our own lives. Because Romance is set on such a high and lofty plane of being, we return from it to look upon our own lives as though from a height. This helps us to thresh through the chaff of daily details, and see what lies beneath — what is truly important in what we do, and what great goals our daily actions may lead to, if only we dare to dream.

(Composed on keyboard Friday, May 16, 2008)