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Romance Revived: Postmodern Romances and the Tradition PDF

234 Pages·1998·10.196 MB·English
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UNIVERSITY OF UMEÅ DISSERTATION ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-450-1 From the Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Umeå University, Sweden Romance Revived Postmodern Romances and the Tradition AN ACADEMIC DISSERTATION which will, on the proper authority of the Chancellor's Office of Umeå University for passing the doctoral examination, be publicly defended in hörsal S213h, Samhällsvetarhuset, on Saturday, 16th May, 1998, at 10.15 a.m. Heidi Hansson Umeå University Umeå 1998 Errata Page, line or note number For: read: p. 107,1. 7 from the bottom destructionist deconstructionist p. 107, note 5 destructionist deconstructionist p. 127,1. 16 from the top preux chevaliers preux chevaliers p. 142,1. 15 from the bottom work works p. 147, note 12 Biographia Biographia Literaria 28. Literaria 28, original emphases. p. 150, note 18 romances romance p. 161,1. 3 from the bottom textual specific p. 176,1. 5 from the top actvities activities p. 208, column 1,1. 7 from the 165.66 165-66 top p. 208, column 2,1. 14 from the Derrida, Jacques 3 Derrida, Jacques 3; top 107n Abstract This is the first study to identify and analyse postmodern romances as a new development of the romance and to relate this late twentieth-century subgenre to its tradition. Based on a selection of works published between 1969 and 1994, by A. S. Byatt, Lindsay Clarice, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, John Fowles, Iris Murdoch, Susan Sontag and Jeanette Winterson, it seeks to demonstrate how this new orientation of the romance produces meaning in dialogue with generic conventions and traditional works and, in doing so, both criticises and rehabilitates the genre. A 'postmodern romance' is a double-natured or hybrid text influenced both by inherited romance strategies and experimental postmodern techniques, such as those specified in Linda Hutcheon's study of the "poetics* of postmodernism: ambiguity, parody, paradox, contradiction and self-reflexivity. Hutcheon's theories, as well as theories of the romance, of intertextuality, of feminism, of New Historicism and of popular culture provide the theoretical framework for my argument. Intertextuality is an important manifestation of literary postmodernism, and I isolate three kinds of intertextual relationships which 1 see as characteristic of postmodern romances. Taking as its starting point Julia Kristeva's view that intertextuality includes social, political and cultural, as well as literary, contexts, 1 argue that feminist ideologies appear as cultural intertexts in postmodern romances, thereby challenging the association between the romance genre and a patriarchal world-view. The connections between post­ modern and chivalric, historical and women's popular romances are instances of generic intertextuality, where particularly postmodern literary strategies are fused with more con­ ventional attributes of the romance. The links between the postmodern works and the various subgenres of romance affect both the former and the latter, making the postmod­ ern texts accessible to a larger audience, but also revealing forgotten or overlooked com­ plexities in earlier examples of the romance. The return to individual texts is an instance of specific intertextuality, where postmodern romances reinterpret and rewrite particular, earlier romances. Since the relationship between the texts involved is dialogic and, hence, unpredictable, the modern works are also reinterpreted by their intertexts. Postmodern romances transcend the boundaries between real and unreal, male and female, "high" and "low" literature, and in the process they show that this might be equally characteristic of traditional romances. As a result of the fusion of postmodern and romantic literary modes, the inherent duality of the romance genre as such is brought to the fore at the same time as the genre is revived. Keywords: romance; postmodernism; dialogue; feminism; intertextuality; destabilised text; cyclical time; critical return; uncertain gender-construction Romance Revived: Postmodern Romances and the Tradition © Heidi Hansson Cover illustration: Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Love and the Pilgrim. © Tate Gallery, London Editor Per Råberg Faculty of Arts University of Umeå S-901 87 Umeå Distributed by Swedish Science Press Box 118 S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden Printed in Sweden by Umeå University Printing Office, 1998 ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-450-1 ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UMENSIS UMEÅ STUDIES IN THE HUMANITIES 141 Romance Revived Postmodern Romances and the Tradition Heidi Hansson UMEÅ UNIVERSITY 1998 Heidi Hansson. Romance Revived: Postmodern Romances and the Tradition. Department of English, Umeå University, S-901 87 Umeå, Sweden. Monograph 1998, 212 pp. Acta Universitatis Umensis. Umeå Studies in the Humanities 141. ISSN 0345-0155 ISBN 91-7191-450-1 Distributed by Swedish Science Press, Box 118, S-751 04 Uppsala, Sweden. Abstract This is the first study to identify and analyse postmodern romances as a new development of the romance and to relate this late twentieth-century subgenre to its tradition. Based on a selection of works published between 1969 and 1994, by A. S. By att, Lindsay Clarke, Michael Dorris and Louise Erdrich, John Fowles, Iris Murdoch, Susan Sontag and Jeanette Winterson, it seeks to demonstrate how this new orientation of the romance produces meaning in dialogue with generic conventions and traditional works and, in doing so, both criticises and rehabilitates the genre. A 'postmodern romance' is a double-natured or hybrid text influenced both by inher­ ited romance strategies and experimental postmodern techniques, such as those specified in Linda Hutcheon's study of the 'poetics' of postmodernism: ambiguity, parody, para­ dox, contradiction and self-reflexivity. Hutcheon's theories, as well as theories of the romance, of intertextuality, of feminism, of New Historicism and of popular culture provide the theoretical framework for my argument. Intertextuality is an important manifestation of literary postmodernism, and I isolate three kinds of intertextual relationships which I see as characteristic of postmodern ro­ mances. Taking as its starting point Julia Kristeva's view that intertextuality includes so­ cial, political and cultural, as well as literary, contexts, I argue that feminist ideologies appear as cultural intertexts in postmodern romances, thereby challenging the association between the romance genre and a patriarchal world-view. The connections between post­ modern and chivalric, historical and women's popular romances are instances of generic intertextuality, where particularly postmodern literary strategies are fused with more con­ ventional attributes of the romance. The links between the postmodern works and the various subgenres of romance affect both the former and the latter, making the postmod­ ern texts accessible to a larger audience, but also revealing forgotten or overlooked com­ plexities in earlier examples of the romance. The return to individual texts is an instance of specific intertextuality, where postmodern romances reinterpret and rewrite particular, earlier romances. Since the relationship between the texts involved is dialogic and, hence, unpredictable, the modern works are also reinterpreted by their intertexts. Postmodern romances transcend the boundaries between real and unreal, male and female, "high" and "low" literature, and in the process they show that this might be equally characteristic of traditional romances. As a result of the fusion of postmodern and romantic literary modes, the inherent duality of the romance genre as such is brought to the fore at the same time as the genre is revived. Keywords: romance; postmodernism; dialogue; feminism; intertextuality; destabilised text; cyclical time; critical return; uncertain gender-construction to Per Marit, Nils and Jerker

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