This dissertation examines the use of liminality, present in English folklore, in queer paranormal historical popular romance novels by KJ Charles, Harper Fox, Freya Marske, Sebastian Nothwell, Arden Powell, Emily Tesh, and Lee Welch. Through thematical criticism, it argues and shows that, in line with political aims of the subgenre of queer popular romance, these authors use the subversive, queering potential liminality has on folklore, history, and the structure of popular romance to enstrange and challenge existing power structures, and chrononormative and heteronormative stereotypes in romance, including the happily ever after required by the genre.
---
Since 2013, there has been a curious influx of queer paranormal historical popular romance novels that use old English folklore for their worldbuilding. Authors such as KJ Charles, Harper Fox, Freya Marske, Sebastian Nothwell, Arden Powell, Emily Tesh, and Lee Welch have populated their stories with fae, ghosts, selkies, magical portals, and other folkloric elements local to the British Isles. Folklore is of course a rich natural source for worldbuilding in paranormal fiction of any kind, be it high fantasy, urban fantasy, horror or romance. However, this wave of novels shows an in-depth use of folkloric material that goes above and beyond the run-of-the-mill magical systems, fantastical creatures and settings, and attempts to reach a more fundamental, structural meaning behind them. Specifically, what appears over and over in the use of folklore in these novels is the theme of in-betweenness and transition – in other words, liminality. Why exactly do authors of queer paranormal historical popular romance use this theme so often, both implicitly and explicitly? (15)
---
One of the political goals of queer popular romance, be it contemporary or historical, is to (re)populate the past and present with queer characters. Of course, it must be said that different queer popular romance authors engage in this political aim to different degrees, but the strengthened presence of LGBTQIA+ characters in the popular romance genre and thus in popular fiction is the result of even the shallowest of these engagements. (20)
---
the majority of queer historical popular romance novels, paranormal or not, keep the period attitude towards queer people true to the historical reality. Even though there are supernatural powers and magic present in the analysed novels, they are not used to completely erase oppression against queer people present in the given period. (38)
The importance of home in queer fiction is shown by the fact that the theme is in one way or another present in all analysed novels, even if the instances are not elaborated or do not focus on liminality per se. (93)
---
One specific kind of community, which has the power to facilitate healing and is often found in romance, especially in novels whose protagonists do not for some reason fit into existing social structures and institutions, is found family. (116)
---
Aside from gaining supernatural abilities, rites of passage in paranormal fiction can result in miraculous transformations, which in turn leads to a question of what it is that needs to be changed and why. 127)
---
In contrast to treatment of disability in Seven Summer Nights, magic is not used for miraculous cure in the Last Binding trilogy. (131)
---
There are two aspects that are interesting specifically in queer people becoming supernatural folkloric figures and are thus subject of the analysis in this subchapter. First, by becoming supernatural, queer MCs bring up the question of monstrosity in relation to queerness. Second, their inhabitation of time and space is unique and has a lot in common with the notion of queer time. (136)
---
In contrast with this negative perception of the monster as despicable, modern theoretical definitions of the monster/monstrosity value positively its ability to challenge the status quo, and, tellingly, can be applied to queer people/queerness as well. (138)
---
To have a fae as one MC in a sexually active relationship is quite common and desired nowadays (they can even be hundreds of years old, as long as they are handsome and able-bodied); to have a sixty-year-old gentleman as the other is not. Nothwell pairs these two together as an obvious dig at the ageism and ableism of popular romance, gay culture and society in general. (150)
---
In its requirement of the HEA, popular romance is the closest to fairy tales. (155)
---
In narrative worlds of paranormal fiction, in which the supernatural is real, magic is another source of power and influence and is usually unevenly distributed, exactly as money- and class-related power is in the real world. Therefore, magic enters the equation of power (im)balance in the fictional world. As a supernatural element, magic can enstrange power distribution, allowing the reader, used and numb to the power distribution in the real world, to perceive the imbalances afresh as an issue of injustice, not as a given, unalterable structure. (172)
---
the fantastic Other is often used for defamiliarization of real forms of discrimination, including race and the use of monstrosity in the corpus, especially the fae in Oak King Holly King, could be interpreted through this lens. Compared to the treatment of class in the analysed novels, however, the direct exploration of race, i.e., not hidden behind the fantastic Other, is not so omnipresent. (185)
---
The gendering of magic in the Last Binding trilogy manifests in the way women are treated with condescension, good enough for domestic magic and for breeding a new generation of men with magical powers, and their magic and its knowledge are deemed inferior, even within bounds of what is deemed a proper use of magic for them. (191)
---
Sex and magic are sometimes described as the same thing in the novels. (200)
---
Depictions of sexual power play (D/s, dominance and submission kink) in popular romance (and fanfiction) are one of the most prone to succumbing to homonormative gender stereotypes. This can mean that the dominant partner is stereotypically portrayed as tall, big, older, masculine, experienced, wielding power (status-related, financial), and a top (the penetrating partner in anal sex), and the submissive partner is short, slim, feminine, younger, inexperienced or even a virgin, with less power, and a bottom (the partner who is being penetrated). Thus, they are seen as taking the roles of a man and a woman in the relationship or sexual encounter, which echoes back the criticism of M/M romance written by women in subchapter 1.3.
Given that magic can enstrange power dynamics as seen in the previous section of this subchapter, it will be instructive to see what role magic plays in treatment of D/s kink elements in the analysed novels. (214)
---
In this dissertation, I have analysed a corpus of queer paranormal historical popular romance novels which are connected by their use of English folkloric liminality to a subversive effect on chrononormativity, history and the HEA required in romance. Examining the presence of a range of liminal folkloric elements in the novels, namely portals, thresholds, and boundaries; rites of passage, liminal folkloric figures, magic, curses, and ghosts, I identified the themes they are representing and the subversive effects they have. (252)
Here's the abstract:
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---
---