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Greek Romances = Action Movies?
I’ve been reading Bakhtin’s long essay on the chronotopic (that’s his word for time and space) in the novel. Basically, in this essay he’s laying out how the use of time and space has changed since the first novel-like books appeared.
As the earliest novel precusors, Bakhtin identifies the Greek romances. What happens here is that there’s a man who falls in love with a woman, but before the marriage can be achieved something happens, leading to an array of adventures which cumulate in the successful marriage.
Now, a lot of other novelistic genres also use this form, but what Bahktin says sets the Greek romances apart is the utter meaninglessness of everything that happens between the failed marriage and the successful one. All the adventures are just trivial events along the way that serve to put off the final marriage–they lead to no character development, to no discovery about the places where they occur; Bakhtin even says that the characters can’t be said to age during these adventures.
As I read this description of the Greek romance and what defines it, it became clear to me that this more or less mirrors the shape of a large number of action movies. Often the movie starts with some kind of incipient romance which is then interrupted by whatever the hand of fate wishes to deal out, the majority of the movie then covers the hero overcoming fate again and again, and finally the romance is successfully completed.
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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So Much for the Granta
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
Greek romances? Modern Greek romance novels? Does he name any authors?
Either way, plot structure is finely-honed science:
http://www.amazon.com/Screenplay-Foundations-Screenwriting-Syd-Field/dp/0385339038/ref=pd_sim_b_2
http://www.amazon.com/Story-Substance-Structure-Principles-Screenwriting/dp/0060391685
It has to do with the medium. You can’t look into the characters’ heads in movies as effectively as you can in writing, so naturally plot dominates. It’s just a question of holding the viewer’s interest.
Marc,
Romance is the term used to describe a certain kind of early novelistic work. A number of Greeks wrote some of the best examples of the genre.
Fascinating. Do you know any of the authors’ names, or when they wrote?
If you search Google for “Greek romance,” there’s a wealth of information, not to mention links to a few Greek romances you can buy from Amazon.
Alternatively, you could read the Bakhtin essay referenced in my post.