This book is based on the premise that love is not as spontaneous and free as one would have us believe. While it is true that love exists in all human communities, not all communities love in the same way. The words used to speak of love, which simultaneously reveal and censor, inform and sublimate, channel and repress the stirrings of the heart, are chosen according to everchanging social and cultural norms.

Love stories or romans d’amour are widely read and appreciated by all classes of society and have been continually revisited and reinvented over time. The capacity for renewal in such a rigidly codified genre is nothing short of amazing, as is the resulting diversity of content.

Love Stories Now and Then is the first comprehensive survey of Quebec and French-Canadian romance novels. It tackles questions that everybody asks. What is “love at first sight”? How do class, nation, religion, and race influence the choice of partners? What are the rules of flirting? What are the limits to expressing one’s desires? What are people’s expectations in marriage? What is the place of sexuality and how does it differ in French and English culture in North America?

This book challenges many of our assumptions about romance and offers a compelling glimpse into people’s dreams and fantasies of love over the past two centuries.