romance characterization is a useful means of isolating William
Faulkner's work from that of contemporary realists and of relating
his novels to the nineteenth-century romance tradition associated
with Hawthorne and Melville. Faulkner is a twentieth-century
novelist, deeply influenced by modern experiments in narrative
point of view and the creation of realistic effects; but his use of
characterization as a direct means of expressing moral and social
concerns associates him with earlier American writers.

According to Mr. Frye the characters of a novel are placed in a
relatively stable environment and given conventional social
personae. But a prose romance is concerned with human indi-
viduality, and something "nihilistic and untamable" threatens to
break from its pages. ³ The novel tends to expand into a fictional ap-
proach to history, whereas most "historical novels" are romances.
According to Hawthorne the author of a romance must be faithful to
the truth of the human heart, but he may present that truth "under
circumstances, to a great extent, of the writer's own choosing or
creation." ⁴ The romancer's emphasis upon man's unchanging moral
nature, in contrast to changing environments, frees him from the
obligation to give a realistic account of social appearances. Faulkner
seems to echo Hawthorne's words by insisting, in his Nobel Prize
speech, that the writer concern himself with "the old verities and
truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story
is ephemeral and doomed." ⁵ Both authors explore the moral and
psychological truths of the heart, and both employ stylized charac-
ters placed in situations designed primarily to illustrate their sym-
bolic or allegorical function.

It might be added to Mr. Frye's description of the novel as a kind
of history that the writer of the prose romance has the obligation not
to create history but to organize a fantastical world in such a way
that it takes the place of history in the reader's imagination. This

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