Abstract
This chapter explores how love is represented in romance novels. It begins with an outline of the ways in which ideas about romantic love have developed and changed over the course of the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and it then considers the extent to which these changing ideas about love have been reflected in romance novels during this period. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the extant scholarship – mostly generated by feminist academics in the wake of second wave feminism – about how we should understand portrayals of love in romance fiction, and what implications these meanings have for society and for romance novels themselves.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Routledge research companion to popular romance fiction |
| Editors | Jayashree Kamble, Eric Murphy Selinger, Hsu-Ming Teo |
| Place of Publication | London ; New York |
| Publisher | Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group |
| Chapter | 21 |
| Pages | 454-484 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781315613468 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781472443304 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Keywords
- Romance fiction
- Love
- Gender
- Sexuality