"The earliest form in which romances appear is that of a rude kind of verse"
About this Quote
Romance, Bulfinch reminds us, didn’t begin as a polished bookshelf genre; it began as something closer to public entertainment: rough verse meant to be heard, remembered, repeated. That word "earliest" is doing quiet work. It nudges the reader away from the assumption that literature naturally starts in refined prose and evolves upward. Instead, he frames romance as a cultural technology born in the mouth before it ever settled onto the page.
The phrase "rude kind of verse" carries an old, patrician double meaning. "Rude" here is not just insulting; it’s anthropological shorthand for untrained, early, pre-modern. Bulfinch is acknowledging the crudeness while also granting it authority as origin: romance didn’t need sophistication to function. It needed rhythm, formula, and a beat sturdy enough to survive transmission. Verse is infrastructure. It’s what makes stories portable in societies where memory is an archive and performance is distribution.
Context matters: Bulfinch, a 19th-century popularizer of classical myth, is writing in an era that prized "high" culture but depended on mass readership. His remark subtly legitimizes his own project. If romance itself starts as accessible, even "rude", material, then retelling myths for ordinary readers isn’t dilution; it’s fidelity to the form’s roots.
The subtext is mildly democratic, even as the diction stays genteel: the grandest narratives often arrive through humble vessels, and literary prestige is frequently retroactive.
The phrase "rude kind of verse" carries an old, patrician double meaning. "Rude" here is not just insulting; it’s anthropological shorthand for untrained, early, pre-modern. Bulfinch is acknowledging the crudeness while also granting it authority as origin: romance didn’t need sophistication to function. It needed rhythm, formula, and a beat sturdy enough to survive transmission. Verse is infrastructure. It’s what makes stories portable in societies where memory is an archive and performance is distribution.
Context matters: Bulfinch, a 19th-century popularizer of classical myth, is writing in an era that prized "high" culture but depended on mass readership. His remark subtly legitimizes his own project. If romance itself starts as accessible, even "rude", material, then retelling myths for ordinary readers isn’t dilution; it’s fidelity to the form’s roots.
The subtext is mildly democratic, even as the diction stays genteel: the grandest narratives often arrive through humble vessels, and literary prestige is frequently retroactive.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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