Abstract

The love story is an integral part of many novels. What is its narrative status? How does it function, and why? In this original study of Socratic 'love stories, ' from Plato through Fielding and Faulkner to the Postmodernists, Jennie Wang proposes a new narrative theory in the study of the novel, which deconstructs the mimesis of 'love stories' and reconstructs their historicity. Wang claims that in the Platonic tradition, the construction of 'love stories' is often a dramatization of the author's historical vision, philosophical speculations, cultural criticism, or political ideology. Novelistic love functions as a literary medium, a power of free speech, that enables the novelist to speak unspeakable truths and include excluded subjects. Wang's work will be of interest to both philosophers and scholars of American literature and postmodernism.