Romance Revisited

After decades of feminism and deconstruction, romance remains firmly in place as a central preoccupation in the lives of most women. Divorce rates skyrocket, the traditional family is challenged from all sides, and yet romance seems indestructible. In terms of its cultural representation, the popularity of romance also appears unchallenged. Popular fiction, Hollywood cinema, television soap-operas, and the media in general all display a seemingly bottomless appetite for romantic subjects. The trappings of classic romance—white weddings, love songs, Valentine's Day--are as commercially viable as ever. In this anthology of original essays, romance is revisited from a wide spectrum of perspectives, not just in fiction and film but in a whole range of cultural phenomena. Essays range over such issues as Valentine's Day, interracial relationships, medieval erotic visions and modern romance fiction, the relationship between the lesbian poet H.D. and Bryher, the pervasive whiteness of romantic desire, lesbian erotica in the age of AIDS, and the public romance of Charles and Diana.

Romance Writing explores the changing nature of both the romance genre and the discourse of romantic love from the seventeenth century to the present day. Indeed, it is one of the first studies to approach romantic love as both genre and discourse in more than sixty years. Faced with the challenge of writing a cultural history for what is commonly understood to be one of lifes most universal, a-historical and cross-cultural phenomena, Lynne Pearce has invoked the concept of the gift to calculate loves added value at different cultural/historical moments. Building upon those philosophical traditions which have argued for the powerfully transformative nature of romantic love, Pearce shows how in the history of literature lovers have utilized its spark to change not only themselves, but also their worlds, through acts of creativity and heroism. The gift of love ranges from the simple gift of a name in the seventeenth century, through notions of immortality, self-sacrifice and selfhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through to the liberating temporal and spatial dislocations of the postmodern age. The opening chapter, The Alchemy of Love, also undertakes an in-depth engagement of the changing nature, and meaning, of romantic love. Providing a judicious blend of close reading and cultural history, Romance Writing will be essential reading for undergraduate students as well as postgraduates and scholars working in the field, while also offering much of interest to the general reader.

Jacob and Arlite's respective jobs don't allow for them to spend much time together, and their relationship suffers as a result. It'll take communication and compromise to save their marriage.

Jessica Benjamin is one of the most important and influential psychoanalysts of the last 4 decades. She is one of the founders of relational psychoanalysis, a movement that has by now expanded over the globe and was also one of the first to introduce feminism and gender studies into psychoanalytic thought. Jessica Benjamin is the most known and quoted representative of these two movements within world psychoanalysis and beyond, in philosophy, gender/women’s studies, and cultural studies department everywhere. The publication of her book, "Bonds of Love" (1989) was nothing short of a revolution. Psychoanalysis was until then a field immune to a changing world, to the unrest of the 60s, to the feminist and queer liberation movements, to the new philosophies of the Frankfurt School in Germany and post-structuralism in France. The book was a game changer. It called psychoanalysis to doubt its most basic premises on the human condition. It read Freud through a feminist framework, and through Hegel, forever tipping our perspective on infancy, gender, and the interplay of power and dependence that drives human relationships from the start. This volume marks the 25th anniversary of Benjamin’s work. Pulling together 15 international scholars, it looks back on the book's first impact, as well as on its continued relevance to psychoanalysis and gender studies today. Chapters offer theoretical deliberations and elaborations of the book's original themes as well as reflecting on it from more intimate angles, as a source of personal and professional inspiration for feminists and clinicians around the world. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in Gender and Sexuality.

Tetsuji Nabeshima is every bit his father's son in terms of attractiveness and determination. Set to graduate at the top of his law school class, qualifying early for--and passing--the New York bar exam, the Japanese transplant's career star is on the rise.Yet one thing holds him back, the mad crush he's developed for his mentor and boss, Nick Denison, his father's best friend.