Crossing Borders: Geographic and Generic Expansiveness in Letitia Landon's Romance and Reality

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe publication of Letitia Landon's first novel, Romance and Reality, in 1831 represented the landmark entrance of an already famous poet into the world of fashionable fiction. It was a transition Landon greeted with enthusiasm, but also with ambivalence: in writing a silver fork novel, she confronted a dichotomy between a novelistic emphasis on verisimilitude and contemporary society, and the more imaginative and poetic ethos she had already developed. This essay highlights the novel's use of varied geographic locales, particularly the incorporation of Italian settings, and argues that this feature functions as a way of resisting generic boundaries. Because of the associations of Italian settings both with other modes of fiction, and with poetic traditions (including her own), Landon can incorporate a poetic and Romantic sensibility into her prose fiction. In so doing, she challenges apparent binaries, co-mingling subgenres (Gothic and silver fork novels), modes of fiction (novels and romances), and narrative sensibilities (heightened emotionality and precise, descriptive verisimilitude).