A companion to romance : from classical to contemporary / edited by Corinne Saunders.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Saunders, Corinne J., 1963-

Series:

Blackwell companions to literature and culture ; 27.

Blackwell companions to literature and culture ; 27

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Romances, English--History and criticism.

Romances, English.

Romanticism--England.

Romanticism.

England.

Physical Description:

xiii, 565 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.

Place of Publication:

Malden, MA : Blackwell, 2004.

Summary:

Romance is a varied and fluid literary genre, notoriously difficult to define. This groundbreaking Companion surveys the many permutations of romance throughout the ages. Comprising 30 essays written by leading authorities in the field, it considers the historical and literary development of the genre from its classical origins to the present day. The focus is on English literature, although this is placed within the larger context of perceptions of romance. The book incorporates discussion of the changing readership of romance, particularly romancersquo; s special relation to women readers. It challenges the idea that the appeal of romance is exclusively escapist, drawing on a wide range of specific and influential literary examples. The Companion is suitable for general readers and for those beginning their study of literature, as well as for readers seeking more specialized information on the issue of romance or on the individual types of writing, writers, and works considered.

Contents:

Ancient romance / Elizabeth Archibald

Insular beginnings : Anglo-Norman romance / Judith Weiss

The popular English metrical romances / Derek Brewer

Arthurian romance / W.R.J. Barron

Chaucer's romances / Corinne Saunders

Malory and the early prose romances / Helen Cooper

Gendering prose romance in Renaissance England / Lori Humphrey Newcomb

Sidney and Spenser / Andrew King

Shakespeare's romances / David Fuller

Chapbooks and penny histories / John Simons

The faerie queene and eighteenth-century Spenserianism / David Fairer

"Gothic" romance : its origins and cultural functions / Jerrold E. Hogle

Women's Gothic romance : writers, readers, and the pleasures of the form / Lisa Vargo

Paradise and cotton-mill : rereading eighteenth-century romance / Clive Probyn

"Inconsistent rhapsodies" : Samuel Richardson and the politics of romance / Fiona Price

Romance and the romantic novel : Sir Walter Scott / Fiona Robertson

Poetry of the romantic period : Coleridge and Keats

Michael O'Neill

Victorian romance : Tennyson / Leonée Ormond

Victorian romance : medievalism / Richard Cronin

Romance and Victorian autobiography : Magaret Oliphant, Edmund Gosse and John Ruskin's "needle to the north" / Francis O'Gorman

Victorian romance : romance and mystery / Andrew Sanders

Nineteenth-century adventure and fantasy : James Morier, George Meredith, Lewis Carroll and Robert Louis Stevenson / Robert Fraser

Into the twentieth century : imperial romance from Haggard to Buchan / Susan Jones

America and romance / Ulrika Maude

Myth, legend and romance in Yeats, Pound, and Eliot / Edward Larrissy

Twentieth-century Arthurian romance / Raymond H. Thompson

Romance in fantasy through the twentieth century / Richard Mathews

Quest romance in science fiction / Kathryn Hume

Between worlds : Iris Murdoch, A.S. Byatt and romance / Clare Morgan

Popular romance and its readers / Lynne Pearce.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0631232710

OCLC:

54529633