Faith Love Hope and Popular Romance Fiction

Faith Love Hope and Popular Romance Fiction explores romance novels from a theological perspective and suggests a new definition of the romance novel to complement other definitions which focus on structural elements: modern popular romances are novels whose authors have assumed pastoral roles offering hope to their readers through works which propagate faith in the goodness and durability of love.Part one outlines how romance authors offer hope and pastoral care to their readers through works which propagate faith in the goodness and durability of love. Part two explores aspects of faith hope love and pastoral care in more detail: words and power; the different faith traditions in the precursors to the modern romance; what it means to hope for a prince as saviour; damnation as the absence of love and metaphorical devils and hells; false or damaging forms of love and how to discern them.