Conflict and Colonialism in 21st Century Romantic Historical Fiction

Download or read book Conflict and Colonialism in 21st Century Romantic Historical Fiction written by Hsu-Ming Teo and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-13 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how postmillennial Anglophone women writers use romantic narrativisations of history to explore, revise, repurpose and challenge the past in their novels, exposing the extent to which past societies were damaging to women by instead imagining alternative histories. The novelists discussed employ the generic conventions of romance to narrate their understanding of historical and contemporary injustice and to reflect upon women’s achievements and the price they paid for autonomy and a life of public purpose. The volume seeks, firstly, to discuss the work of revision or reparation being performed by romantic historical fiction and, secondly, to analyse how the past is being repurposed for use in the present. It contends that the discourses and genre of romance work to provide a reparative reading of the past, but there are limitations and entrenched problems in such readings.