AustLit

The papers in this journal edition are drawn from a number of fascinating anddiverse perspectives on the romance genre presented at the inaugural Elizabeth Jolley Conference, Reading and Writing Romance in the 21st Century, held at Curtin University in 2013. As this collection demonstrates, romance can be understood as a genre, a formula, a trope and an incursion. At the heart of the romantic tale lies love, but love also infiltrates all other genres. These papers show romance not only across genres but also across histories, geographies, ethnicities and mediums. In these varied texts, love works to maintain and disrupt normative heterosexual coupling, to constrain and permit feminine desire, to reinforce and resist normative gender roles, and build hegemonic social, political and economic relations. In the popular imagination, love and work are opposing forces, but in romance love works hard. These examinations of the work of love further our understanding of the romance genre in terms of its practices, forms, contexts, pleasures and effects. (Introduction 257)