The Lost Age of Romance

What do James Bond, Don Quixote, and steampunk fiction have in common?

I was talking with one of my kids about Don Quixote, and something struck me. In Cervantes's novel, the elderly Quixote is a Spanish gentleman whose wits become addled from reading too many romances of chivalry. He begins to think of himself as a knight-errant, and goes wandering about Spain getting into trouble. Much of the humor in Don Quixote (both the book and various stage or film adaptations) comes from the mismatch between the prosaic reality of his surroundings and the old knight's wildly romantic visions.

Except . . . consider this. The "cynically prosaic" world that gave Quixote so many hard knocks was Spain in the age of Phillip II. The age of Elizabeth, of Shakespeare, of Bacon, of Raleigh, of Lope de Vega, of Drake, of John Dee, of Rudolf II, of Ivan the Terrible, of Galileo. Cervantes, the man who invented the Don, was captured by pirates and kept as a slave in North Africa for five years. Just a generation or so earlier, Cortez and a few hundred men conquered the whole Aztec empire with nothing but steel swords and determination. By the standards of almost any age, it was a time of adventure and wild romance.

Flash forward five hundred years. The most recent James Bond film, the visually stunning Skyfall, includes a bit where Bond's superior "M" regrets the end of the Cold War because nowadays everything's so sordid and ambiguous, not like the good old days. 

Except . . . in spy movies from the Cold War era, the heroes constantly bewail the ambiguity and sordidness of the business, not like the good old days of the Second World War. And so on. The age of glorious adventure is always past. Nowadays everything's so complicated and ordinary. 

Science fiction differs from most genres in that it locates the age of romance in the future. We'll go off to other planets and have perilous encounters with strange alien being. It'll be thrilling and wide-open and meaningful — not like the present, when everything's so complicated and ordinary.

Steampunk (if you squint) can be seen as science fiction's obeisance to the romance of the past. Since SF is a fundamentally technological genre, it can't really have nostalgic stories about preindustrial history, but it can get nostalgic about the age of steam. Steampunk has turned the Victorian era into a time of adventure and romance. You could go off and explore uncharted continents, and actually find lost civilizations. In the fiction of the time you could blast off for Mars and cruise along the canals fending off pirates while wooing green-skinned space babes. Not like the present, when everything's so complicated and ordinary.

So perhaps we should strive to look at our own time through the lens of romance. At the dawn of the 21st Century the world was so exciting! People battled terrorists and pirates, built spaceships and robots, discovered new planets and lost civilizations! 

All times are complicated and ordinary, and are full of adventure and wild romance. You get to choose which one you live in.  

 

Comments

[L. Beecee]

Like this one. In a few years Robert can use these for class essays, if he is unscrupulous and clever enough.

[Michael S. Schiffer]

Kipling made a similar point in the (now very romantic) 19th century in his poem "The Kng": http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/king.html

[Cambias]

Michael: Kipling! That's who wrote that poem! I was sure it was Chesterton, and spent a good half hour skimming through everything I could find by him, only to come up empty. Thanks!

[Michael S. Schiffer]

You're welcome! It's one of my favorites. But I can see associating it with Chesterton.

On a slightly different note, have you read Randall Garrett's "Despoilers of the Golden Empire"? I was reminded of it by some of what you write above. (But I don't want to say too much if you haven't. It's on Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24091/24091-h/24091-h.htm )

[Chuk]

I think Heinlein kind of touched briefly on this in Tunnel in the Sky.