The Fourth Annual International Conference on Popular Romance Studies: York #IASPR12
Not only was The Fourth Annual International Conference on Popular Romance Studies: The Pleasures of Romance the first academic conference I have ever attended, it was my very first paper presentation. After talking to a lot of people, I get the sense that most of them aren’t nearly so much fun. If you take a look […]
The Sense of an Ending
I feel free to appropriate this title because, although it happens to be the title of Julian Barnes’ celebrated piece of literary fiction, he borrowed it from an older, and much wiser book by Frank Kermode: The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Despite the title, Kermode’s book isn’t really about […]
Suspense and the Happy Ending
If you’re an Erotic Romance reader, I would really like to talk to you. I’m interested in your experience of happy endings in erotic romance and how, even though you know that the story will end with the lovers getting together, you feel a level of suspense during your reading of the story. If you […]
States of Grace: Reader Innocence, Happy Endings and the Writer as Responsible Sadist
“Your virtue!” said the lady, recovering after a silence of two minutes; “I shall never survive it. Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding Academia puts a high value on the ability to read critically; to deny the text our heart and view it with an analytical, objective mind. From the early of the 20th Century onwards, […]
Erotic Romance Readers: What does a Happily Ever After Ending do for You?
I’ve had a marvelous time in conversation with 10 erotic romance writers. Each of them have given me wonderful insights into their craft, their challenges and their unique understanding of what constitutes erotic romance and their relationship with the genre and sub-genres. One thing that impressed me overwhelmingly was how close they feel to their […]
Why Conversations Matter: Hermeneutic Phenomenology
I’ve been having a wonderful time having conversations with writers about their writing and the uses and effects of the ‘Happily Ever After’ convention. However, in some cases, it has been difficult to persuade people to speak to me via voice with Skype, or explain why a text chat or an email exchange won’t work. […]
Erotic Romance Writers: Your thoughts, please
If you read my blog fairly regularly, you’ll already know I’m working on a research project investigating the function of the HEA/HFN ending in erotic romance, not simply as a form of narrative closure, but examining if and how it plays other roles in how you construct, imagine, character build, etc. If you write erotic […]
Closure in Erotic Fiction
“The Happily Ever After, while often decried as one of the most limiting aspects of a romance novel, provides a secure anchor to the reader and allows a romance author considerable leeway in the sorts of conflict she can present, as long as she doesn’t cross a reader’s personal line in the sand, beyond which […]
Foucault, Death and the Happily Ever After.
Thinking about the metanarrative possibilities of the Happily Ever After trope, it has occured to me, in re-reading Foucault’s “What is an Author?” that there is a kernel of something here to be explored. In examining the relationship between writing and death, Foucault gives us two examples: the hero in the Greek epic and case […]
Interrogating the Happily Ever After: research approaches
For those of you who are actually reading these posts on my ‘Happily Ever After’ exploration, I thank you for coming along for the ride and I do hope I’m not boring you to tears. One of my sneaky reasons for posting these blog posts is in the hope that I can encourage some of […]