Abstract for PCA Confrence.

Well, after many revisions I e-mailed my abstract for my paper for the PCA confrence. The due date got extended to the 30th, so I had a bit more time to tweak it, but I wanted to get it in. No word back, but I don't expect to get any for a while. Though I do wish someone had sent me a confirmation e-mail.

Here it is, in all it's brevity:

Deadly Love:
Conflict and Paradigms in Vampire Romance Novels

In her essay “Legends of Seductive Elegance” Anne Stuart claims, “At the heart of the vampire myth is a demon lover who is both elegant and deadly, a creature whose savagery is all the more shocking when taken with his seductive beauty and style” (85). The vampire in paranormal romance novels is a curiously subversive creature. It transforms the long tradition of vampire mythology as seen in the Hades and Persephone myth, the Death and the Maiden figure in 15th century paintings, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The central tension in vampire myth is between the vampire and the human: life and death, innocence and experience, immortality and mortality, age and youth. In traditional vampire stories the way to resolve this human-vampire conflict is the mortals’ death or the vampire’s true death. However, the vampire in paranormal romance is a sympathetic character who deserves a happy ending, which leads authors to resolve conflict in ways that do not result in the death off the hero or the heroine. To achieve these happy endings, several paradigms have evolved within the genre. This paper investigates subversive elements and conflict-resolution paradigms in the paranormal vampire romance genre, focusing on works by Nora Roberts, Christine Feehan, JR Ward and Sherrilyn Kenyon.