I've included this because there is a sub-section which focuses on romance novels. I admit that I have an interest in this particular metaphor because I discuss the hunt of love in For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance (2011). Anyway, here's the abstract for this article:
Within the cognitive linguistics literature, many publications have dealt with conceptual metaphors about love and sexual desire (Lakoff 1987; Kövecses 2003; Barcelona 1992, 1995; Emanatian 1995, 1996.) However, a source domain that has not received the attention it merits is that of the hunt. This source domain deserves to be studied not only because of the interest in the conceptual metaphors it generates, but primarily because of the ideology and cultural values behind it. For this reason, applying a combined methodology based on cognitive linguistics and critical discourse analysis (Charteris-Black 2004; Goatly 2007), this article explores the use of the source domain of the hunt for the expression of love and sexual desire in metaphorical linguistic expressions with male hunters and female prey, paying critical attention to discourse and the ideologies about gender that are conveyed.
See section 3.2.3 (pages 105-108) on "The prey": "romantic popular fiction seems to be populated by prey of all types. The following are from Mills and Boon novels" (105).
I've included this because there is a sub-section which focuses on romance novels. I admit that I have an interest in this particular metaphor because I discuss the hunt of love in For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance (2011). Anyway, here's the abstract for this article:
See section 3.2.3 (pages 105-108) on "The prey": "romantic popular fiction seems to be populated by prey of all types. The following are from Mills and Boon novels" (105).