The subgenre of historical romance, in particular, confirms the American attraction to all things British, and the genre’s most notable examples perennially evoke the history, landscape and cultural mannerisms of England specifically. This chapter investigates this peculiar infatuation with English culture and settings, and suggests that it is rooted in a continuing desire to project a distinctive American identity. Most historical romance novels deploy an ideal of Englishness based on the rigidity of its class system, its well-defined gender roles and the decadent splendour of past colonial power. In this study, I argue that the romance genre perpetuates and advances the values that our collective imaginary associates mostly with the US, thus playing an important part in the configuration and projection of the American identity. (194)
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I would argue that historical popular romance asserts the readers’ cultural and national identity via the fictionalised retelling of specific past events and lifestyles. (195)
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the male protagonists, classified as either gentlemanly businessmen or business-like lords, are made to represent the American principles of individualism and industrial capitalism, among others. (198)
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Again the Magic provides a historically romanticised vision of migration, evoking a mythical past when America guaranteed prosperity to foreigners. Kleypas clearly minimises the problematic aspects of migration and of transatlantic relationships, even at the time in which the novel is set. This is not to say, however, that all criticism is absent. McKenna’s efforts to present the US as a democracy and a meritocracy are openly questioned when he is publicly humiliated by one of his American fellow travellers, a member of the New York upper class. (199)
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Throughout the series, Kleypas goes to great lengths to distinguish between these snobs and the people who represent true Americanness. (200)
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business-like lords feature the best of both English and American national identities, as Kleypas imagines them, astutely combining a fascination for mythical aristocratic mores (Englishness) with the solid entrepreneurial mentality that has historically dominated the American economic system. (206)
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