Adventure novel
Encyclopedia
The adventure novel is a genre of novel
s that has adventure
, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.
"...an adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work."
D'Ammassa argues that adventure novels make the element of danger the focus of their story; hence he argues that
Charles Dickens
' novel A Tale of Two Cities
is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being
imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens' Great Expectations
is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure."
Adventure has been a common theme
since the earliest days of written fiction. Indeed, the standard plot of Medieval romance
s was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus
, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies
, a hero
would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with a second set of adventures leading to a final reunion.
Variations kept the genre alive. From the mid 19th century onwards, when mass literacy grew, adventure became a popular subgenre of fiction. Although not exploited to its fullest, adventure has seen many changes throughout the year - from being constrained to stories of knights in armor to stories of high-tech espionages.
Examples of that period include Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, père
, Jules Verne
, H. Rider Haggard
, Victor Hugo
,
Emilio Salgari
, Louis Henri Boussenard
, Thomas Mayne Reid
, Sax Rohmer
, Edgar Wallace
, and Robert Louis Stevenson
.
Adventure novels often overlap with other genres, notably war novel
s, crime novels, sea stories
, Robinsonade
s, spy stories (as in the works of John Buchan, Eric Ambler
and Ian Fleming
), science fiction
, fantasy
,
(Robert E. Howard
and J.R.R. Tolkien both combined the secondary world story with the adventure novel)
and Western
s. Not all books within these genres are adventures. Adventure novels take the setting and premise of these other genres, but the fast-paced plot of an adventure focuses on the actions of the hero within the setting. With a few notable exceptions (such as Baroness Orczy
, Leigh Brackett
and Marion Zimmer Bradley
) adventure novels tend to be a genre largely dominated by male writers.
Adventure novels and short stories
were popular subjects for American pulp magazine
s, with several magazines such
as Adventure
, Argosy
, Blue Book
, Top-Notch, and Short Stories
specializing in this genre. Notable pulp adventure writers included Edgar Rice Burroughs
, Talbot Mundy
, Theodore Roscoe
, Johnston McCulley
, Arthur O. Friel
, Harold Lamb
, Carl Jacobi
, George F. Worts,
Georges Surdez, H. Bedford-Jones
and J. Allan Dunn
.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s that has adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme.
History
Critic Don D'Ammassa, in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction defines the genre by stating that"...an adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work."
D'Ammassa argues that adventure novels make the element of danger the focus of their story; hence he argues that
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
' novel A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature....
is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being
imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens' Great Expectations
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in serial form in the publication All the Year Round from 1 December 1860 to August 1861. It has been adapted for stage and screen over 250 times....
is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure."
Adventure has been a common theme
Theme (literature)
A theme is a broad, message, or moral of a story. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and are almost always implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character,...
since the earliest days of written fiction. Indeed, the standard plot of Medieval romance
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
s was a series of adventures. Following a plot framework as old as Heliodorus
Heliodorus of Emesa
Heliodorus of Emesa, from Emesa, Syria, was a Greek writer generally dated to the third century AD who is known for the ancient Greek novel or romance called the Aethiopica or sometimes "Theagenes and Chariclea"....
, and so durable as to be still alive in Hollywood movies
Adventure film
Adventure films are a genre of film.Unlike pure, low-budget action films they often use their action scenes preferably to display and explore exotic locations in an energetic way....
, a hero
Hero
A hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
would undergo a first set of adventures before he met his lady. A separation would follow, with a second set of adventures leading to a final reunion.
Variations kept the genre alive. From the mid 19th century onwards, when mass literacy grew, adventure became a popular subgenre of fiction. Although not exploited to its fullest, adventure has seen many changes throughout the year - from being constrained to stories of knights in armor to stories of high-tech espionages.
Examples of that period include Sir Walter Scott, Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, père
Alexandre Dumas, , born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...
, Jules Verne
Jules Verne
Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who pioneered the science fiction genre. He is best known for his novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea , A Journey to the Center of the Earth , and Around the World in Eighty Days...
, H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
, Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
,
Emilio Salgari
Emilio Salgari
Emilio Salgari was an Italian writer of action adventure swashbucklers and a pioneer of science fiction.For over a century, his novels were mandatory reading for generations of youth eager for exotic adventures. In Italy, his extensive body of work was more widely read than that of Dante. Today...
, Louis Henri Boussenard
Louis Henri Boussenard
Louis Henri Boussenard was a French author of adventure novels, dubbed the French Rider Haggard during his lifetime but better known today in Eastern Europe than in Francophone countries...
, Thomas Mayne Reid
Thomas Mayne Reid
Thomas Mayne Reid , was an Irish-American novelist. "Captain" Reid wrote many adventure novels akin to those written by Frederick Marryat and Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a great admirer of Lord Byron...
, Sax Rohmer
Sax Rohmer
Arthur Henry Sarsfield Ward , better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist. He is best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr...
, Edgar Wallace
Edgar Wallace
Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was an English crime writer, journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and numerous articles in newspapers and journals....
, and Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
.
Adventure novels often overlap with other genres, notably war novel
War novel
A war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war...
s, crime novels, sea stories
Sea story
-Description:The enclosed setting of life aboard a ship allows an author to portray a social world in miniature, with characters cut off from the outside world and forced to interact in cramped and stressful conditions....
, Robinsonade
Robinsonade
Robinsonade is a literary genre that takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The success of this novel spawned enough imitations that its name was used to define a genre, which is sometimes described simply as a "desert island story"...
s, spy stories (as in the works of John Buchan, Eric Ambler
Eric Ambler
Eric Clifford Ambler OBE was an influential British author of spy novels who introduced a new realism to the genre. Ambler also used the pseudonym Eliot Reed for books co-written with Charles Rodda.-Life:...
and Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
), science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
, fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
,
(Robert E. Howard
Robert E. Howard
Robert Ervin Howard was an American author who wrote pulp fiction in a diverse range of genres. Best known for his character Conan the Barbarian, he is regarded as the father of the sword and sorcery subgenre....
and J.R.R. Tolkien both combined the secondary world story with the adventure novel)
and Western
Western fiction
Western fiction is a genre of literature set in the American Old West frontier and typically set from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. Well-known writers of Western fiction include Zane Grey from the early 1900s and Louis L'Amour from the mid 20th century...
s. Not all books within these genres are adventures. Adventure novels take the setting and premise of these other genres, but the fast-paced plot of an adventure focuses on the actions of the hero within the setting. With a few notable exceptions (such as Baroness Orczy
Baroness Orczy
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was a British novelist, playwright and artist of Hungarian noble origin. She was most notable for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel...
, Leigh Brackett
Leigh Brackett
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American author, particularly of science fiction. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on famous films such as The Big Sleep , Rio Bravo , The Long Goodbye and The Empire Strikes Back .-Life:Leigh Brackett was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California...
and Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Many critics have noted a feminist perspective in her writing. Her first child, David R...
) adventure novels tend to be a genre largely dominated by male writers.
Adventure novels and short stories
Short Stories
Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...
were popular subjects for American pulp magazine
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
s, with several magazines such
as Adventure
Adventure (magazine)
Adventure magazine was first published in November 1910 as a monthly pulp magazine. Adventure went on become one of the most profitable and critically acclaimed of all the American pulp magazines...
, Argosy
Argosy (magazine)
Argosy was an American pulp magazine, published by Frank Munsey. It is generally considered to be the first American pulp magazine. The magazine began as a general information periodical entitled The Golden Argosy, targeted at the boys adventure market.-Launch of Argosy:In late September 1882,...
, Blue Book
Blue Book (magazine)
Blue Book was a popular 20th-century American magazine with a lengthy 70-year run under various titles from 1905 to 1975.Launched as The Monthly Story Magazine, it was published under that title from May 1905 to August 1906 with a change to The Monthly Story Blue Book Magazine for issues from...
, Top-Notch, and Short Stories
Short Stories (magazine)
-Origin of Short Stories:Short Stories began its existence as a literary periodical, carrying work by Rudyard Kipling,Emile Zola, Bret Harte, Ivan Turgenev and Anna Katharine Green. The magazine advertised...
specializing in this genre. Notable pulp adventure writers included Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Rice Burroughs was an American author, best known for his creation of the jungle hero Tarzan and the heroic Mars adventurer John Carter, although he produced works in many genres.-Biography:...
, Talbot Mundy
Talbot Mundy
Talbot Mundy was an English writer. He also wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt.-Life and work:...
, Theodore Roscoe
Theodore Roscoe
Theodore Roscoe was an American biographer and writer of adventure, fantasy novels and stories. Roscoe's stories appeared in pulp magazines including Argosy, Wings, Flying Stories, Far East Adventure Stories, Fight Stories, Action Stories and Adventure. A collection of his stories, The Wonderful...
, Johnston McCulley
Johnston McCulley
Johnston McCulley was the author of hundreds of stories, fifty novels, numerous screenplays for film and television, and the creator of the character Zorro...
, Arthur O. Friel
Arthur O. Friel
Arthur Olney Friel was one of the most popular writers for the adventure pulps. He began appearing in Adventure magazine in 1919 with stories set in the Amazon jungle featuring the characters Pedro and Lourenço, two rubber-industry workers who undergo harrowing experiences in the impenetrable...
, Harold Lamb
Harold Lamb
Harold Albert Lamb was an American historian, screenwriter, short story writer, and novelist.Lamb was born in Alpine, New Jersey. He attended Columbia University, where his interest in the peoples and history of Asia began. Lamb's tutors at Columbia included Carl Van Doren andJohn Erskine. ...
, Carl Jacobi
Carl Richard Jacobi
Carl Richard Jacobi was an American author. He wrote short stories in the horror, fantasy, science fiction and crime genres for the pulp magazine market.-Biography:...
, George F. Worts,
Georges Surdez, H. Bedford-Jones
H. Bedford-Jones
Henry James O'Brien Bedford-Jones was a Canadian historical, adventure fantasy, science fiction, crime and Western writer who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1908. After being encouraged to try writing by his friend, writer William Wallace Cook, Bedford-Jones began writing dime...
and J. Allan Dunn
J. Allan Dunn
Joseph Allan Dunn , best known as J. Allan Dunn, was one of the high-producing writers of the American pulp magazines. He published well over a thousand stories, novels, and serials from 1914–41. He first made a name for himself in Adventure...
.
See also
- Men's adventureMen's adventureMen's adventure is a genre of magazines that had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured glamour photography and lurid tales of adventure that typically featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals.These magazines are...
(also known as "the sweats") is a subgenreGenre fictionGenre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
of pulp magazinePulp magazinePulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
that feature tales of exotic adventure and warWarWar is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...
time heroHeroA hero , in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion...
ism. - Picaresque novelPicaresque novelThe picaresque novel is a popular sub-genre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts, in realistic and often humorous detail, the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society...
- RobinsonadeRobinsonadeRobinsonade is a literary genre that takes its name from the 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The success of this novel spawned enough imitations that its name was used to define a genre, which is sometimes described simply as a "desert island story"...
- Thriller (genre)
- War novelWar novelA war novel is a novel in which the primary action takes place in a field of armed combat, or in a domestic setting where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, or recovery from, war...