Abstract
ROMANCE, HAWTHORNE EXPLAINS IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE preface to The House of the Seven Gables, must rigidly subject itself to even as it claims for itself-in contradistinction to the novel-a right, or privileges of representational latitude and of the freedom of the imagination.' This famous definition of romance is at this point misleadingly simple; for what precisely is that system of laws, rights and privileges to which the romance writer must adhere? Are those laws that delimit and determine the genre, that is, strictly aesthetic ones? The last paragraph of the same preface suggests otherwise. Here, in a judicious disclaimer (that has since become standard in fictional works), Hawthorne cautions readers not bring his fancy-pictures . . . into positive contact with the realities of the
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