The dangerous lover has haunted our culture for over two hundred years English American and European literature is permeated with his erotic presence. The Dangerous Lover takes seriously the ubiquity of the brooding romantic herohis dark past his remorseful and rebellious exile from comfortable everyday living. Deborah Lutz traces the recent history of this figure through the melancholy iconoclasm of the Romantics the lost soul redeemed by love of the Bronts and the tormented individualism of twentiethcentury love narratives. Arguing for this characters central influence not only in literature but also in the history of ideas this book places the dangerous lover firmly within the philosophy of Martin Heidegger the Modernism of Georg Lukcs and Roland Barthess theories on love and longing. Working with canonical authors such as Ann Radcliffe Charles Maturin Lord Byron Charles Dickens George Eliot and Oscar Wilde and also with noncanonical texts such as contemporary romance The Dangerous Lover combines a lyrical essayistic style with a depth of inquiry that raises questions about the mysteries of desire death and eroticism. The Dangerous Lover is the first booklength study of this pervasive literary hero it also challenges the tendency of sophisticated philosophical readings of popular narratives and culture to focus on malecoded genres. In its conjunction of high and low literary forms this volume explores new historical and cultural framings for femalecoded popular narratives.