1. Romance Evolved: An Exploration of Romance in the Interactive Narratives of Final Fantasy and Lunar
Johansen Quijano
University of Texas at Arlington
PCA / ACA National Conference 2011
April 19th – April 23rd

2. What is “Romance” Anyway?
A Love Story
Tangential Elements
Happy Ending
Quest
Superior Hero
Magic Items
Vast Landscape

3. Narrative Elements of a Romance
Society
Meeting
Attraction
Barrier
Ritual Death
Recognition
Declaration
Engagement

4. The Anti Hero Protagonist

5. The Heroine

6. Temporal Regression / Textual Progression

7. The Repetition of the Quest Cycle

8. Evolution Through Immersion
The reader is actively participating
The reader is projected into the story
The reader does not consume, but creates
The reader interacts with the text

9. References
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Coyne, Richard. Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.
Heller, Dana. The Internalization of Quest Romance. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
Jacobs, Ronald N. and Philip Smith. “Romance, Irony, and Solidarity.” Sociological Theory 15.1 (1997):
La Farge, Benjamin. “Comic Romance.” Philosophy and Literature 33.1 (2009): (Article) John Hopkins University Press.
Light, Alison. “Returning to Manderley: Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class.” Feminist Review 16.2 (1984): 7-25.
Liu, Yin. “Middle English Romance as Prototype Genre.” The Chaucer Review 40.4 (2006): 335 – 353.
Pavel, Thomas. “Exile as Romance and as Tragedy.” Poetics Today 17.3 (1996):
Perez, Janet. “Presence of the Picaresque and the Quest-Romance in Mercè Rodoreda's Quanta, quanta Guerra.” Hispania 76.3 (1993):
Ramsdell, Kristin. Romance Fiction: A Guide to the Genre. Englewood: Libraries Unlimited,1999.
Selinger, Eric Murphy. “Rereading the Romance.” Contemporary Literature 48.2 (2007): 307 – 324.
Vitou, Pierre. “The Mode of Romance.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language (2007): 387 – 410.
Whitman, John. “Thinking Backward and Forward: Narrative Order and the Beginning of Romance.” Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 4.2 (2006): 131 – 150.