This book is a study of female virginity loss and its representations in popular Anglophone literatures. It explores dominant cultural narratives around what makes a “good” female virginity loss experience by examining two key forms of popular literature: autobiographical virginity loss stories and popular romance fiction. In particular, this book focuses on how female sexual desire and romantic love have become entangled in the contemporary cultural imagination, leading to the emergence of a dominant paradigm which dictates that for women, sexual desire and love are and should be intrinsically linked together: something which has greatly affected cultural scripts for virginity loss. This book examines the ways in which this paradigm has been negotiated, upheld, subverted, and resisted in depictions of virginity loss in popular literatures, unpacking the romanticisation of the idea of “the right one” and “the right time”.
Зміст
1.Introduction: The Lost Virginity of Britney Spears.- 2. Chapter One – The Demisexual Citizen.- 3. Chapter Two – The Good Girl Virgin.- 4. Chapter Three – These Are My Confessions: The History, Project, and Pleasures of the Virginity Loss Confessional Genre.- 5. Chapter Four – Confessions Part II: Reading the Virginity Loss Confessional Genre.- 6. Chapter Five – This Modern Love: The Virgin Heroine in Historical Romance Fiction.- 7. Chapter Six – Middle Class Morality: The Virgin Heroine in Contemporary Category Romance Fiction.- 8. Chapter Seven – Virginity Loss in the Twenty-First Century and Reactions to Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey.- 9. Conclusion – Virgin Territory.
Про автора
Dr Jodi Mc Alister is a Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. She has published extensively on romantic love in popular culture. She is also an author; her young adult paranormal romance novels include Valentine (2017), Ironheart (2018), and Misrule (2019).