What Are The Best Renaissance Romance Novels To Read?

Oh, the novels of Renaissance romance are just so beautifully, magically crafted to contain so much passion and politics and poetry. One of my absolute favorites of all time has to be The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, which, yes, is rather outside the mainstream of typical romance novels in being very dark indeed. Yet it is such an utterly fascinating and so very intense novel, and this particularly in terms of its exploration of the power of love. Written as it was by a playwright (of another epoch), the novel offers a powerful sense of drama, and remains as forceful and as moving as ever. As for arcadian romance, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit by John Lyly is another absolute treasure, above all for the dialogues which are so full of wit and of sparkle. For a more grounded exploration of the tortured conflicting feelings of love, however, it would be hard to think of anything better than Arcadia by Sir Philip Sidney. The rather cardboard characters in this sprawling, rather idealized novel of a half-dozen or so love stories all involving rather knight-like shepherds are so beautifully and imperiously mapped out against the backdrop of a completely fictional idyllic rural context, with all their conversations consisting of the sharpest and wisest repartee, and their glances at each other swimming with hidden meanings.

Another different approach to the romance novel of the Renaissance era is found in ‘Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit’ by John Lyly. Most readers would consider it to be outside the genre of romance yet there are many great dialogues regarding the complexities of love and friendship. For something totally different, maybe one of the most celebrated poems of the Renaissance era would be ‘The Faerie Queene’ by Edmund Spenser. Written as an allegorical romance featuring knights, damsels, enさ chantresses and fantastical quests, it is a magnificent read with lots of romance woven throughout the very moral tales of the imaginary land of Faerie. Yes, it is written in a very rich and dense language but after a while you can fall into its rhythm and be transported by a mighty wave of beautiful poetry.

I love Renaissance romances, including their imperfections. The great love stories of the past are not as neat as modern tales with happy endings. Rather, they are fraught with the agony and politics of love and contain many unpredictable human interactions. Every time I return to a book I have read before, I discover something new about the human experience and the time period in which the author lived.