Chapter Boundaries and Scene Shifts in Early Modern Prose Romances

ABSTRACT: This essay argues that there is not a clear linear development of the chapter from medieval printed romances to the novel. Through a functional analysis of chapter boundaries in the early modern prose romance it becomes evident that chapters perform a much more complex function than dividing episodes or marking a scene shift. A large portion of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century romances do not contain chapters at all. Chapters are especially common in conservative chivalric romances that both in content and form (including the print type) imitate medieval romance. Close readings illustrate how authors use chapter boundaries to guide the attention of their readers, emphasize certain passages, such as speeches and other rhetorical set pieces, or provide metanarrative commentary. Traditional forms of the scene shift are not replaced by the use of chapters but supplement each other. Finally, the essay also explores the use of techniques other than chapter boundaries to achieve comparable effects, such as the use of headings to mark important passages or the insertion of rhyming couplets within prose texts. The essay comes to the conclusion that the introduction of chapters aided early modern authors in fashioning an explicitly literary genre that remained popular well into the eighteenth century.