Doctoral thesis

Based on an exhaustive analysis of the existing bibliography dealing with the romance genre in Spain, usually devoted to the study of particular authors or novel series, the aim of this PhD Thesis is to systematically study the romance genre, from its 19th century repertoire until today.

Thus, the first objective of the project is to define and limit which are the traits, formally and thematically, constituting the genre. A broad definition will be provided to allow for the categorization of both paraliterary and canonical works of fiction under the umbrella of the term “romance”.  

The second objective is derived from the first one: to trace and propose a corpus of Spanish authors that can work as canon for the genre. The creation and analysis of an exemplary and dialectical corpus is planned, so that the paraliterary works dialogue with works belonging to the canon, such as Insolación (historia amorosa) (1889) by Emilia Pardo Bazán. This is an exercise analogous to that carried out by Pamela Regis and Lisa Fletcher, anglophone scholars who have devoted their research to the analysis of the popular romance novel.  

The choice of an exemplary corpus is justified by the third objective of the project: an in-depth analysis of how love and romantic relationships are represented and codified in each one of the proposed novels. What’s the link between love, history and ideology? And how are these relationships articulated in literary works? In other words, what is, or which are the sensory regimes displayed by the novels? If we were to use Rancière’s terminology (2008). Which are the conceptual spheres mobilized by love metaphors? How and why are narrative structures maintained or renewed? These are only some of the questions this PhD Thesis seeks to address.  

In order to answer these questions, the investigation will resort to a heterogeneous theoretical and methodological apparatus. The starting point will be genre theory and Popular Romance Studies. Nonetheless, formal analysis tools provided by both classical structuralism and stylistics, as well as their more contemporary developments such as cognitive poetics (Lakoff theory of metaphor) and post-classical narratology, will also be used.