Romancing the Caribbean Sea: Size, Mobility and Sustainability in Cruise Ship Romance Fiction
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Elina Valovirta
Abstract
Popular romance novels taking place on Caribbean cruise ships work through the two main elements characterizing the cruise industry: ever bigger ships and their movement across the Caribbean sea’s paradise locations. Size and mobility matter for romances such as Caribbean Cruising, Santa Cruise and Onboard for Love, which offer a unique vista to the Caribbean seascape from the deck and the cabin of the luxury cruise liner sailing usually from the US to places like the Cayman Islands, Puerto Rico and St Kitts. Popular romance is produced for readers’ escapist pleasure needs, not to preach or politicize. But it is clear, that they must contain elements that readers want from their books, such as value consistency. Beyond the paradise discourse lies the industry’s sustainability dilemma: factors like climate change and overtourism force sustainability front and centre. There is every reason to believe that these values might also seep into romance literature, as the texts suggest that the environment matters for romance. This scrutiny into the conjuncture of the literary and cruise industries, through a consideration of cultural sustainability, suggests multimodal and mobile readers with their value-needs could ultimately influence industries across the board for more sustainable literary futures.
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Articles in the same Issue
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- Frontmatter
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- Gothic Plague: Defoe, Petrarch and Curiosity
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- The Ruined Archives of W. G. Sebald
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- Ned Blackhawk. 2023. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U. S. History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 616 pp., 30 b-w illus., £ 28.00/$ 22.00.
- Errata
- Erratum to: Introduction: Abstract Reflection in Contemporary Fiction
- Erratum to: “A Bridge is an Utterance”: Abstract Reasoning in Adrian Duncan’s A Sabbatical in Leipzig
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Carthage’s Palladium: John Marston’s Sophonisba
- Gothic Plague: Defoe, Petrarch and Curiosity
- Wondrous Wandering Words: The Hidden Politics of Language in British Women’s Travel Writing on Colonial India (1805–1857)
- Museum Writing and Ethical Selection in Victorian Children’s Literature
- The Ruined Archives of W. G. Sebald
- Romancing the Caribbean Sea: Size, Mobility and Sustainability in Cruise Ship Romance Fiction
- Reviews
- Andrew Benjamin (ed.). 2023. Heidegger and Literary Studies. Cambridge Studies in Literature and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 376 pp., $85.00.
- Maxine Newlands and Claire Hansen (eds.). 2024. Critical Approaches to the Australian Blue Humanities. London: Routledge, 238 pp., £38.99.
- Hilary Thompson. 2023. Worldly Spirits, Extra-Human Dimensions, and the Global Anglophone Novel. London: Bloomsbury, 226 pp., £76.50/$115.
- Christopher Rieger. 2024. Faulkner’s Fashion: Gender, Race, Class, and Clothing. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 171 pp., £67.50/$90.00.
- Ned Blackhawk. 2023. The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U. S. History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 616 pp., 30 b-w illus., £ 28.00/$ 22.00.
- Errata
- Erratum to: Introduction: Abstract Reflection in Contemporary Fiction
- Erratum to: “A Bridge is an Utterance”: Abstract Reasoning in Adrian Duncan’s A Sabbatical in Leipzig
