A01=Lisa Fletcher
Affective Speech Acts
Apparent Inexhaustibility
Author_Lisa Fletcher
Category=DS
Category=DSA
Category=DSBH
Category=JBCC1
Category=JBSF
Cross-dressed Heroine
Cross-dressing Plot
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Explicit Performatives
french
French Lieutenant's Woman
French Lieutenant’s Woman
genre
Heterosexual Hegemony
Heterosexual Romance
Heterosexual Romance Fictions
Heterosexual Romance Narratives
Heterosexual Romance Plot
Heterosexual Romantic Subject
Historical Romance Fiction
Historical Romance Novels
Historiographical Metafiction
Late Twentieth Century Western Culture
lieutenants
novels
popular
Popular Historical Romance
Popular Romance Fiction
postmodern
Postmodern Romance
Romance Fiction
Romance Genre
Social Performative
Static Long Shot
Undoing Gender
woman
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9780754662020
- Weight: 498g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 28 Mar 2008
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The first book-length study of romance novels to focus on issues of sexuality rather than gender, Historical Romance Fiction moves the ongoing debate about the value and appeal of heterosexual romance onto new ground, testing the claims of cutting-edge critical theorists on everything from popular classics by Georgette Heyer, to recent 'bodice rippers,' to historical fiction by John Fowles and A.S. Byatt. Beginning with her nomination of 'I love you' as the romance novel's defining speech act, Lisa Fletcher engages closely with speech-act theory and recent studies of performativity. The range of texts serves to illustrate Fletcher's definition of historical romance as a fictional mode dependent on the force and familiarity of the speech act, 'I love you', and permits Fletcher to provide a detailed account of the genre's history and development in both its popular and 'literary' manifestations. Written from a feminist and anti-homophobic perspective, Fletcher's subtle arguments about the romantic speech act serve to demonstrate the genre's dependence on repetition ('Romance can only quote') and the shaky ground on which the romance's heterosexual premise rests. Her exploration of the subgenre of cross-dressing novels is especially revealing in this regard. With its deft mix of theoretical arguments and suggestive close readings, Fletcher's book will appeal to specialists in genre, speech act and performativity theory, and gender studies.
Dr Lisa Fletcher is Lecturer in the School of English, Journalism and European Languages at the University of Tasmania, Australia.
