Demythification of Romantic Love in the West: An Analysis of Little Narratives in José Luis Sampedro’s El Amante Lesbiano

Abstract:

The present thesis deals with the intended abandonment of traditional notions of Romantic love in some manifestations of Western literature. The novel analyzed is José Luis Sampedro’s El Amante Lesbiano, where concepts such as gender roles, marriage, and sexuality have been removed from their conventionalities in favour of love. The thesis provides two points of analysis concerning El Amante Lesbiano. One, the use of little narratives that deconstruct gender and the Romantic notions of love; the second, an analysis on Sampedro’s strategies to demythify Romantic love, namely the modulation of typical mythical images depicting romance. Such analysis answers to the raised research questions by this thesis: why are little narratives used by Sampedro to deconstruct gender and Romantic Love? And what results from the demythification of such notion in El Amante Lesbiano?