Ciel
Posted in gorgeous, outdoors, photography, poetry, words on March 8th, 2010
I was recently asked to specify my first New Year’s Resolution, which was to “Be more romantic.” I find romantic a difficult word to define; happily, a few lexicographers have done the job for me. Their entries are quite poetic in themselves, I think.
Oxford English Dictionary
romantic, adj.
b. Mus. Characterized by the subordination of form to theme, and by imagination and passion.
3. Of projects, etc.: Fantastic, extravagant, quixotic; going beyond what is customary or practical.
4. a. Having a bent or tendency towards romance; readily influenced by the imagination.romance, n.
3. A fictitious narrative in prose of which the scene and incidents are very remote from those of ordinary life …
6. An extravagant fiction, invention, or story; a wild or wanton exaggeration; a picturesque falsehood.
Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory
Romance. … In the 13th c. a romance was almost any sort of adventure story, be it of chivalry or of love. Gradually more and more romances were written in prose. … It is usually concerned with characters (and thus with events) who live in a courtly world somewhat remote from the everyday. This suggests elements of fantasy, improbability, extravagance, and naïvety.
I suppose, then, that I want the improbability and wildness without the falsehoods and naivete. While acknowledging the practical and what is real, I want to be prone to flights of fancy and whimsical extravagances.








