Romance Writing explores the changing nature of both the romance genre
and the discourse of romantic love from the seventeenth century to the
present day. Indeed, it is one of the first studies to approach romantic
love as both genre and discourse in more than sixty years.
Faced with the challenge of writing a cultural history for what is
commonly understood to be one of lifes most universal, a-historical and
cross-cultural phenomena, Lynne Pearce has invoked the concept of the
gift to calculate loves added value at different cultural/historical
moments. Building upon those philosophical traditions which have argued
for the powerfully transformative nature of romantic love, Pearce shows
how in the history of literature lovers have utilized its spark to
change not only themselves, but also their worlds, through acts of
creativity and heroism. The gift of love ranges from the simple gift of
a name in the seventeenth century, through notions of immortality,
self-sacrifice and selfhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
through to the liberating temporal and spatial dislocations of the
postmodern age. The opening chapter, The Alchemy of Love, also
undertakes an in-depth engagement of the changing nature, and meaning,
of romantic love.
Providing a judicious blend of close reading and cultural history,
Romance Writing will be essential reading for undergraduate students as
well as postgraduates and scholars working in the field, while also
offering much of interest to the general reader.
