Disability, Literature, Genre: Representation and Affect in Contemporary Fiction

Author
Publisher
Liverpool University Press
Location
Liverpool
Publication year
2019
Comment

See Chapter 5, which is on romance.

A review by Diane R. Weiner is available here at the Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. Another, by Anelise Farris is available at Fafnir and here's the paragraph about the chapter on romance:

The last chapter of Cheyne’s book considers how these types of “disruptive” depictions of disability in romance – a genre known for happily-ever-after endings – can be “profoundly transformative” as they encourage “disability to be felt afresh in ways that can destabilise habitual feelings and responses” (160, emphasis original). Through examining curative narratives in three romance novels – Barbara McMahon’s One Stubborn Cowboy, Christina Dodd’s Candle in the Window, and Barbara Delinsky’s An Accidental Woman – Cheyne illustrates how “even romance narratives which feature cure can problematise intervention or position disability as part of a desirable future” (151). This final chapter reiterates that depictions of disability are able to challenge not only genre conventions but also the ways readers encounter and respond to disability long after the pages are closed.

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