The Wives of the Dead | Style

Romance
‘‘The Wives of the Dead’’ is an American romance. The term "romance'' emerged during the Middle Ages and often referred to stories with farfetched plots and exotic settings, involving knights and their quests, and chivalric behavior. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the term became synonymous with stories emphasizing emotion and subjective experience. Classical romance includes intricate plots, mistaken identity, random events, and separated lovers, most of which Hawthorne's story contains. American romantics, especially Hawthorne, occasionally...

[The entire page is 434 words long]

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

Summary and Analysis – Themes – Characters – And much more...