The Great Gatsby and the Romance Formula: A Socio-historical Analysis of the Literary Formula
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Romance as a literary genre mostly concerns in the progress of a heterosexual love relationship. Thus, The Great Gatsby is a romance since its main plot is organized with and progressed by the love relationship between Gatsby and Daisy. Romance is one of the oldest and most enduring of literary formulas, persisting with a certain transformation across historical and cultural differences. Therefore, as a literary genre, the romance proves itself to be a specimen for both the mutability and the continuity of a literary form. Moreover, the study of the romance formula could offer an illuminating paradigm in articulating the reciprocal but contingent interaction between literature of the highbrow and that of the lowbrow since the romance formula has been used in both serious literature and popular one. The Great Gatsby can be seen as an incorporating type of the two representative qualities of the romance formula: the historical mutability and the mediation between high and popular literature. Besides, by using a literary technique, parody, the novel also imitates some characteristics of the inherited romance formula in its structure, but with an ironical and critical distance against the original formula. Therefore, this essay discusses, at first, the relationship between the medieval romance tradition and The Great Gatsby, especially in terms of a literary technique, parody. Next, the influences of popular magazine romances on this novel are discussed with regard to the reciprocal but contingent interdependence between high and popular literature. Finally, by comparing The Great Gatsby as a male romance with the contemporary mass-produced female romances, this essay tries to illuminate what meanings we can draw from the historical transition of the romance formula. It is apparent that Fitzgerald used a parody of the medieval romance formula as one of the organizing principles in his text. Moreover, the magazine romances produced around the 1920s had significant influence on the formulaic aspects of The Great Gatsby to a certain extent because Fitzgerald himself was one of the popular writers of the magazine romance. In case of the contemporary female romance, The Great Gatsby shares a common ground with the female romance in terms of the gender and the socio-historical environment. Consequently, by adopting the formulaic elements of the romance tradition including the medieval romance, the magazine romance, and the female romance, The Great Gatsby exposes the shallow hypocrisy and inhumane corruption of the capitalist America.
Abstract
Romance as a literary genre mostly concerns in the progress of a heterosexual love relationship. Thus, The Great Gatsby is a romance since its main plot is organized with and progressed by the love relationship between Gatsby and Daisy. Romance is one of the oldest and most enduring of literary formulas, persisting with a certain transformation across historical and cultural differences. Therefore, as a literary genre, the romance proves itself to be a specimen for both the mutability and the continuity of a literary form. Moreover, the study of the romance formula could offer an illuminating paradigm in articulating the reciprocal but contingent interaction between literature of the highbrow and that of the lowbrow since the romance formula has been used in both serious literature and popular one. The Great Gatsby can be seen as an incorporating type of the two representative qualities of the romance formula: the historical mutability and the mediation between high and popular literature. Besides, by using a literary technique, parody, the novel also imitates some characteristics of the inherited romance formula in its structure, but with an ironical and critical distance against the original formula. Therefore, this essay discusses, at first, the relationship between the medieval romance tradition and The Great Gatsby, especially in terms of a literary technique, parody. Next, the influences of popular magazine romances on this novel are discussed with regard to the reciprocal but contingent interdependence between high and popular literature. Finally, by comparing The Great Gatsby as a male romance with the contemporary mass-produced female romances, this essay tries to illuminate what meanings we can draw from the historical transition of the romance formula. It is apparent that Fitzgerald used a parody of the medieval romance formula as one of the organizing principles in his text. Moreover, the magazine romances produced around the 1920s had significant influence on the formulaic aspects of The Great Gatsby to a certain extent because Fitzgerald himself was one of the popular writers of the magazine romance. In case of the contemporary female romance, The Great Gatsby shares a common ground with the female romance in terms of the gender and the socio-historical environment. Consequently, by adopting the formulaic elements of the romance tradition including the medieval romance, the magazine romance, and the female romance, The Great Gatsby exposes the shallow hypocrisy and inhumane corruption of the capitalist America.
참고문헌 (24)
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