More summaries from the April 2009 Pop Culture Association Conference, this time a romance panel featuring some of the bloggers at Teach me Tonight! As usual with these posts, keep the possibility of human error (mine) in mind.
“Me, Myself, and I: Love As the Integration of selves in the romance fiction of Nora Roberts”, An Goris, doctoral candidate, U. of Louvain, Belgium
NR always engages with basic narrative conventions of romance genre, but also marred by numerous forms of diversity. Goris focuses on 8 books, out of NR’s 200. Love is presented as a complex, multifaceted, ambiguous emotions. Love as both huge and scary, disruptive, but also simple, basic, real – life’s basis. H/H experience love first as one, then as the other. Calls process the “integration of selves”. Can see this in NR’s writing in her representation of body, mind, and relationships.
Conceptual dichotomy, mind v. body, rational v. irrational, artificial v. natural. Body as vessel of emotional truth. Ex. Characters go pale when shocked, prior to even realizing cognitively they are shocked. Ex. Characters need to touch each other prior to recognition of feelings. H/H emotional journey from conflict to harmony b/t mind and body.
