Yearning Hours: Desire, Darcymania, and Readerly Attachments in the Digital Jane Austen Fandom

According to the record at Linköping University, this was a doctoral dissertation.

Here's the abstract:

This study examines the phenomenon of “Darcymania” and readerly uses of character in the digital sphere. Situated at the intersection of feminist cultural studies, fan studies, and digital reading studies, and informed by affect theory and queer theory, the thesis investigates how the stoic Regency heartthrob of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mr Darcy, has been reimagined in contemporary digital culture. Focusing in particular on rapidly spreading creations like GIFs, memes, headcanons, and hashtags on the plat-form Tumblr, the study shows that Darcy’s character inspires a wide range of attachments and intimacies, including ironic attachment, camp aesthetics, the performance of lesbian and female masculinities, and the formation of an intimate queer community. By analysing uses of character that differ, sometimes radically, from entrenched ideas about how romance readers and fangirls engage with literature, the study contributes to a better understanding of how digital modalities and affordances facilitate complex readerly attachments to fictional characters. In its exploration of the intricacies of digital social reading, the study offers new in-sights into the ways contemporary readers interpret, engage with, and relate to characters online.

Much of this refers to film versions of Pride and Prejudice: "One of the scenes that emerge most frequently in the fantext is the so-called “hand flex” shot in the 2005 film" (86) 

In addition, although "Pride and Prejudice is frequently described as the urtext of modern romance" (Wallin Lämsä 16) that novel itself is not a "popular romance novel" in the current sense since Austen "is what Pierre Bourdieu would call a consecrated author" (Wallin Lämsä 20).

However, although I do not include all work on Austen in this database, I've included this because it

offers new perspectives and insights into a readerly engagement with romance, expanding both our empirical data and theoretical understanding about fangirls, romance readers, and Austen reception today. (Wallin Lämsä 77)

as it explores how Mr Darcy is understood as a romance hero:

Mr Darcy is an often-idealised emblem of masculinity, the archetype of the prideful, aristocratic romance hero. This study has taken an interest in what makes Darcy so persistent as a fan favourite – the ways in which he can be altered and fitted to suit different readerly needs and desires. (328)

In addition, there is frequent use of scholarship on popular romance, in particular

One of the studies that has most influenced my approach to romance is Elin Abrahamsson’s queer reading of the genre. Abrahamsson suggests that repetition is one of the central pleasures of romance reading, which makes her argument especially relevant to fandom. As we have seen, fans also seek out slight variations of the same tropes, phrases and images, in order to repetitively engage with specific characters. Abrahamsson’s theory of romance therefore maps well onto this readerly community, at least partially. (307)

Wallin Lämsä argues, moreover, that 

By investigating this arguably peripheral group of Austen fans and the norms of their interpretive community, the study has illuminated readerly practices and uses of character that challenge common assumptions about girls, fandom, and romance reading more broadly. (319)