Ruritanian romance

Frontispiece to The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope.

Ruritanian romance is a genre of literature, film and theatre comprising novels, stories, plays and films set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the "Ruritania" that gave the genre its name.[1]

Such stories are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the ruling classes, almost always aristocracy and royalty,[1] although (for instance) Winston Churchill's novel Savrola, in every other way a typical example of the genre, concerns a revolution to restore rightful parliamentary government in the republican country of Laurania. The themes of honor, loyalty and love predominate, and the works frequently feature the restoration of legitimate government after a period of usurpation or dictatorship.

History of the genre

Romantic stories about the royalty of a fictional kingdom were common in fiction, for instance Robert Louis Stevenson's Prince Otto (1885), prior to Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda (1894). But it was the great popularity of that novel that set the type, with its handsome political decoy restoring the rightful king to the throne, and resulted in a burst of similar popular fiction, such as George Barr McCutcheon's Graustark novels (1901–27) and Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Lost Prince (1915), and other homages.[2] Another example is The Mask of Dimitrios (1939) by Eric Ambler (titled A Coffin for Dimitrios in the US), which was made into a 1944 film version.[3]

The genre was widely spoofed and mocked. George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man parodied many elements. Dorothy Sayers's Have His Carcase featured as the murder victim a man deceived by his murderers because of his foolish belief in his royal ancestry, fed by endless reading of Ruritanian romances. In Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, the main narrator has the delusion of being the incognito king of a "distant northern land" who romantically escaped a Soviet-backed revolution.[4] The Marx Brothers film Duck Soup is set in a bankrupt Freedonia. In the satire The Mouse That Roared, the Duchy of Grand Fenwick attempts to avoid bankruptcy by declaring war on the United States as a ploy for gaining American aid.

The popularity of the genre declined after the first part of the twentieth century. Aside from the change in literary taste, the royalist elements of Ruritanian romances became less plausible as many European monarchies receded even from memory, and their restorations grew less likely.

Many elements of the genre have been transplanted into fantasy worlds, particularly those of fantasy of manners and alternate history.[5] The science fiction writer Andre Norton first reached success with a 1934 Ruritanian novel, The Prince Commands.[5] Although "Ruritania" originally referred to a contemporary country, the idea has been adapted for use in historical fiction. A subgenre of this is historical romance, such as Jennifer Blake's Royal Seduction and its sequel Royal Passion; both are set in the nineteenth century and feature Prince Rolfe (later King) and his son Prince Roderic respectively, of the fictional Balkan country of Ruthenia. (It must be noted, though, that an area of eastern Europe somewhat to the north of the Balkan peninsula, in the Carpathian mountains, is known as, among other names, Ruthenia.)

Other Ruritanian settings in fiction

The Grand Budapest Hotel, a 2014 comedy film written and directed by Wes Anderson, is set in the fictional nation of Zubrowka, a central European alpine state teetering on the outbreak of war.[6]

In 2015 James Dunford Wood's Continental with Juice imagined a scenario in which the modern-day Ruritania (a recent ex-Soviet republic) is bankrupt after the European debt crisis. Refused a loan by Germany's Chancellor Merkel, the country is forced to consider resurrecting the monarchy via the long-defunct Elpherg dynasty, in order to earn tourist dollars.[7]

Avram Davidson's Doctor Eszterhazy stories are set in a fictitious ramshackle Balkan empire resembling Austria-Hungary, but with Ruritanian characteristics.

Ursula K. Le Guin set a number of short stories and a novel in the fictitious Eastern European land of "Orsinia",[8] which has been identified as being simultaneously Ruritanian and naturalistic.[9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 John Clute and John Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 826 ISBN 978-0-312-19869-5
  2. ↑ Prisoner of Zenda
  3. ↑ Sutherland, John. Bestsellers: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press (2007), p. 113 ISBN 019157869X
  4. ↑ McCarthy, Mary (June 4, 1962). "A Bolt from the Blue". The New Republic. Revised version in Mary McCarthy (2002). A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays. New York: The New York Review of Books. pp. 83–102. ISBN 1-59017-010-5. Retrieved 2006-09-25.
  5. 1 2 John Clute and John Grant, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy p. 827 ISBN 978-0-312-19869-5
  6. ↑ "Spoiler Alert: You Can't Really Stay at the Real Grand Budapest Hotel (But We Can Tell You Everything About It)". Retrieved 2015-06-20.
  7. ↑ Dunford Wood, James (2015). Continental with Juice: A Modern Ruritanian Romance. Magic Oxygen. ISBN 978-1910094297.
  8. ↑ Le Guin, Ursula K (1976). Orsinian Tales. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 179 (hardcover). ISBN 978-0575022867.; Le Guin, Ursula K (1979). Malafrena. New York: Putnam. p. 369. ISBN 978-0399124105.; and Le Guin Ursula K (2005). Unlocking the Air and Other Stories. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks. pp. 207 (paperback re–issue). ISBN 978-0060928032.
  9. ↑ Bittner, James (November 1978). "Persuading Us to Rejoice and Teaching Us How to Praise: Le Guin's Orsinian Tales". Science Fiction Studies. 5 (16).

External links

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