Romance Revived: Postmodern Romances and the Tradition

234 Pages·1998·10.196 MB·English

by  Heidi Hansson

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