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.

Marie-Pier Luneau is Full Professor in the Dé partement des Arts, langues et litté ratures at the Université de Sherbrooke where she has taught Quebec literature for more than 20 years. Currently director of the Groupe de recherche et d’ é tudes sur le livre au Qué bec (GRé LQ), She co-founded and co-manages the international journal Mé moires du livre / Studies in Book Culture. An award-winning author and researcher, she has published books on authorship, on the history of publishing in Quebec, and more recently on the history of popular literature and in particular romance novels. Jean-Philippe Warren is Professor of Sociology and Concordia University and a member of the Royal Society of Canada. Co-director of the “ Democracy and Pluralism” section of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Diversity and Democracy, he is the author more than 300 articles on many subjects linked to the development of Quebec and Canada. He is the recipient of several awards and distinctions including the Governor General’ s Award for Nonfiction (2015) and the Canada Prize in the Humanities and Social Sciences for the best scholarly book (2019). Jean-Philippe Warren lives in Montreal.