Adventure fiction
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Adventure fiction is a type of fiction that usually presents danger, or gives the reader a sense of excitement. Some adventure fiction also satisfies the literary definition of romance fiction.[1]
History
In the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction, Critic Don D'Ammassa defines the genre as follows:
.. An adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting, and other elements of creative work.[2]
D'Ammassa argues that adventure stories make the element of danger the focus; hence he argues that Charles Dickens's novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens's Great Expectations is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure."[2]
Adventure has been a common
Variations kept the genre alive. From the mid-19th century onwards, when mass literacy grew, adventure became a popular subgenre of fiction. Although not exploited to its fullest, adventure has seen many changes over the years – from being constrained to stories of knights in armor to stories of high-tech espionage.
Examples of that period include
Adventure
Adventure fiction often overlaps with other genres, notably
, (For children
Adventure stories written specifically for children began in the 19th century. Early examples include Johann David Wyss's The Swiss Family Robinson (1812), Frederick Marryat's The Children of the New Forest (1847), and Harriet Martineau's The Peasant and the Prince (1856).[9] The Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with
See also
- Action fiction
- Action-adventure comics
- Adventure Comics
- Adventure gamebook (interactive)
- Crime fiction
- Detective fiction
- Lost world (genre)
- Men's adventure
- Military fiction
- Nautical fiction
- Outdoor literature
- Picaresque novel
- Robinsonade
- Subterranean fiction
- Spy fiction
- Swashbuckler
- Thriller (genre)
- Voyages extraordinaires
- War novel
- Western (genre)
Notes
- ^ "Essay on Romance", Prose Works volume vi, p. 129, quoted in "Introduction" to Walter Scott's Quentin Durward, ed. Susan Maning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. xxv.
- ^ a b D'Ammassa, Don. Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction. Facts on File Library of World Literature, Infobase Publishing, 2009 (pp. vii-viii).
- ^ Green, Martin Burgess. Seven Types of Adventure Tale: An Etiology of A Major Genre. Penn State Press, 1991 (pp. 71–2).
- ^ Taves, Brian. The Romance of Adventure: The Genre of Historical Adventure Movies.University Press of Mississippi, 1993 (p. 60)
- ^ a b Server,Lee. Danger is My Business: An Illustrated History of the Fabulous Pulp Magazines. Chronicle Books, 1993 (pp. 49–60).
- ^ Robinson, Frank M. and Davidson, Lawrence. Pulp Culture – The Art of Fiction Magazines. Collectors Press Inc. 2007 (pp. 33–48).
- ^ Pringle, David. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy. London, Carlton pp. 33–5
- Richard A. Lupoff.Master of Adventure: The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. University of Nebraska Press, 2005 (pp.194, 247)
- ^ Hunt, Peter. (Editor).
Children's literature: an illustrated history. Oxford University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-19-212320-3(pp. 98–100)
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-514656-1(pp. 12–16).
- ^ Hunt, 1995, (pp. 208–9)
External links
- Works related to Adventure at Wikisource