Doubled plots
Subtitle: romance and history
By: edited by Susan Strehle and Mary Paniccia Carden.
Contributors: Strehle, Susan.; Carden, Mary Paniccia.
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Jackson
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
Subjects: Historical fiction, American -- History and criticism.; American fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Historical fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Women and literature -- English-speaking countries.; Love stories, American -- History and criticism.; Love stories, English -- History and criticism.; Literature and history -- United States.; Literature and history -- Great Britain.; Plots (Drama, novel, etc.)
Description: "In art, myth, and popular culture, romance is connected with the realm of emotions, private thought, and sentimentality. History, its counterpart, is the seemingly objective compendium of public fact. In theory, the two genres are diametrically opposed, offering widely divergent views of human experience."

"In this collection of essays, however, the writers challenge these basic assumptions and consider the two as parallel and as reflections of each other. Looking closely at specific narratives, they argue that romance and history share expectations and purposes and create the metaphors that can either hold cultures and institutions together or drive them apart. The writers explore the internal contradictions of both genres, as seen in works in which the elements of both romance and history are present. The theme that flows throughout this collection is that romance literature and art frequently engage with or comment on actual historical events or histories."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 213-222) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : reading romance, reading history / Susan Strehle and Mary Paniccia Carden; title: Making love, making history : (anti) romance in Alice McDermott's At weddings and wakes and Charming Billy / Mary Paniccia Carden; title: History and the end of romance : Danticat's The farming of bones / Susan Strehle; title: Stopping traffic : spectacles of romance and race in The last of the Mohicans / Janet Dean; title: What "race" is the sheik? rereading a desert romance / Susan L. Blake; title: Behind the mask of coquetry : the trickster narrative in Miss Num'e of Japan : a Japanese-American romance / Huining Ouyang; title: Romancing the borderlands : Josephina Niggli's Mexican village / Rita Keresztesi; title: What's a nice girl like you doing in a book like this? Homoerotic reading and popular romance / Stephanie Burley; title: Desire and the marketplace : a reading of Kathleen Woodiwiss's The flame and the flower / Charles H. Hinnant; title: A story of her weaving : the self-authoring heroines of Georgette Heyer's regency romance / Karin E. Westman; title: The race, gender, romance connection : a Black feminist reading of African American women's historical romances / Rita B. Dandridge.