Chapter Introduction
Conflict and Colonialism in 21st Century Romantic Historical Fiction: Repairing the Past, Repurposing History
Language
EnglishAbstract
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.
Keywords
Sexual Justice,Historical Romance,Caribbean Historical Romance,Caribbean Literature,US Civil War,Quaker,the Spanish Civil War,The Faithless Wife,Parsons Yazzie,Her Land, Her Love,Navajo,Pacific War,Holocaust Literature,Plantation Life,Sarah Lark,Women’s Suffrage,Suffragette,Conflict and Colonialism in 21st Century Romantic Historical Fiction,Hsu-Ming Teo,Paloma Fresno-Calleja,Routledge Research in Women's Literature,postmillennial Anglophone women writers,romantic narrativisations of history,alternative histories,romance,romantic historical fiction,historical and contemporary injusticeDOI
10.4324/9781003493792-1ISBN
9781032778211, 9781032797724, 9781003493792Publisher
Taylor & FrancisPublisher website
https://taylorandfrancis.com/Publication date and place
2025Grantor
Imprint
RoutledgeClassification
Literature: history and criticism
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
Colonialism and imperialism