Boys’ Love Romance in the Realm of Popular Literature: Genre, Motif, and the Future of Romance

Boys’ love romance is popular literary sub-genre that has developed in the past two decades. This popular work became globally accepted and enjoyed due to its successful publication and reproduction into various forms of projection such as films and TV series. BL romance is a new trend in popular literature. Its existence cannot be separated from various acceptance and appreciation from the various levels of readers and researchers. The paper discusses the position of boys’ love romance in the popular literary sphere. As a new sub-genre in popular literature, this work has its own structure in terms of conveying messages and issues. The working paper framed the readings of this genre based on its mode of narration which is hereinafter referred to as the motif. The motif in the present paper was adopted from Bal’s (1997) suggestion of focalization which encompasses on the focus of the narration. With respect to Bal’s suggestion, the position of the character as well as the narrator of the story also takes control to the running of the plot, which of course gives impact to the interplay between the theme, the subject matter and the character(s) of the story. The relationship between the pattern of narrative mode and the theme of the story enables this sub-genre to bring an interesting phenomenon in the development of popular literature. As a literary work, this genre certainly carries its own mission for its readers and the future development of literary and cultural studies