- Welcome, guest!
- Login
- Join eNotes

- Literature
- Question & Answer
- Discussion
- Documents
- Teachers
- College
- Reference

- Topics & Authors
- Science
- Law & Politics
- History
- Business
- Social Sciences
- Arts
- Health

## Get immediate homework help!

We have live tutors standing by.

# Home > Reference > Adventure novel

- Reference

## Adventure novel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

| This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)

The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main theme. Adventure has been a common theme since the earliest days of written fiction. Indeed, the standard plot of Medieval romances 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. Examples of that period include Alexandre Dumas, père, Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, Emilio Salgari, Louis Henri Boussenard, Thomas Mayne Reid, Sax Rohmer, Edgar Wallace, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and Robert Louis Stevenson. Adventure novels often overlap with other genres, notably war novels, crime novels, sea stories, Robinsonades, science fiction, fantasy, and Westerns. 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.

## See also

- Men's adventure, also known as the sweats, a genre of pulp magazine featuring tales of exotic adventure and wartime heroism.
- Picaresque novel
- Robinsonade
- War novel

Fiction
Character | Protagonist · Antagonist · Focal character · Viewpoint character · Foil character
Plot | Dramatic structure: Exposition · Conflict · Rising action · Climax (narrative) · Falling action · Dénouement · Plot device · Subplot
Setting | Utopia · Dystopia · Fictional universe · Fictional location · Fictional country
Theme | Motif
Style | Narrative mode · Tone · Symbolism · Imagery · Diction · Suspension of disbelief · Literary technique
Form | Novel · Novella · Short story · Flash fiction · Play · Fable · Fairy tale · Poetry · Screenplay · Hypertext fiction
Genre | Adventure · Comic · Crime · Docufiction · Faction · Fantasy · Historical · Horror · Mystery · Philosophical · Political · Romance · Saga · Satire · Science · Speculative · Thriller · Urban · Paranoid
Narration | Omniscient narrator · First-person narrator · Third-person narrator · Unreliable narrator · Limited omniscient narrator
Literature portal

## Copyright Information

This article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. For information on the contributors, please see the original Wikipedia article.