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Love, Language, Place, and Identity in Popular Culture: Romancing the Other explores the varied representations of Otherness in romance novels and other fiction with strong romantic plots. Contributors' approaches range from sociolinguistics to cultural studies, and the texts analyzed are set on four continents, with particular emphasis on Caribbean and Atlantic islands. What all the essays have in common is the exploration of representations of the Other, be it in an inter-racial or inter-cultural relationship. Chapters are divided into two parts; the first examines place, travel, history, and language in 20th-century texts; while the second explores tensions and transformations in the depiction of Otherness, mainly in texts published in the early 21st century. This book reveals that even at the end of the 20th century, these texts display neocolonialist attitudes towards the Other. While more recent texts show noticeable changes in attitudes, these changes can often fall short, as stereotypes and prejudices are often still present, just below the surface, in popular novels. The understudied field of popular romance, in which the Other is frequently present as a love interest, proves to be a fruitful area in which to explore the potential and the realities of the treatment of Otherness in popular culture. Scholars of literature, communication, romance, and rhetoric will find this book particularly useful.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction: María Ramos-García and Laura Vivanco
Part I: Place, Travel, History and Language
Chapter 1: Britannia's Daughters: Popular Romance Fiction and the Ideology of National Superiority (1950s-1970s)
María del Mar Pérez-Gil
Chapter 2: 'And they Drive on the Wrong Side of the Road': The Anglo-centric Vision of the Canary Islands in Mills & Boon Romance Novels (1955-1987)
María Jesús Vera-Cazorla
Chapter 3: Cross-Cultural Romance and the Shadow of the Sheikh
Maureen Mulligan
Chapter 4: Othering and Language: Bilingual Romances in the Canary Islands
María Isabel González-Cruz
Chapter 5:Language Awareness in Four Romances Set on the Island of Madeira
Aline Bazenga
Chapter 6: Archipelagoes of Romance: Decapitalized Otherness in Caribbean Trash Fiction
Ramón Soto-Crespo
Part II: Tensions and Transformations
Chapter 7: Public Conflicts and Private Treaties in Kathleen Eagle's Native American Themed Romance Fiction
Johanna Hoorenman
Chapter 8: Changing Attitudes to Others: Meljean Brook's Riveted (2012) and its Context
Laura Vivanco
Chapter 9: Representations of Otherness in Paranormal Romance: Race and Wealth in Nalini Singh and J.R. Ward"
María Ramos-García
Chapter 10: 'There's Something Charming about a Man with an Accent, Isn't There?' The Representation of Otherness in Three Novels by Lisa Kleypas"
Inmaculada Pérez-Casal
About the author
María Ramos-García is professor of Spanish at South Dakota State University.
Laura Vivanco holds a PhD from the University of St. Andrews.
