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Romance and repetition: testing the limits of love

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>12/09/2011
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Popular Romance Studies
Issue number1
Volume3
Number of pages14
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Following on from my previous work in Romance Writing on the “deep structures” of romance, this article speculates further on the temporality of romantic love: in particular, the problems posed by repetition. In the course of my discussion, I move from a consideration of how the various schools of theory that inform our understanding of romantic love deal with repetition, to some suggestions of how romantic literature has negotiated (or, more typically, side-stepped) the issue, before closing with a reflection on the further insights provided by Sarah Waters’s best-selling novel, The Night Watch (2006). The complexity of the relationships featured in this text enable us to probe deeper into how the human subject’s notional compulsion to repetition (Freud) both generates romantic relationships and tests the limits of our more ideal definitions of love.