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Situating each novel in its own time while interpreting it through the critical vocabulary she proposes, Regis specifies how romance conventions change yet retain the essential formal requirements of the genre."--BOOK JACKET.
"Regis makes an important contribution to the understanding of eighteenth-century American ideas."--
Finding that romance novels are an important literary genre not only because they comprise nearly half of paperback fiction sold, but also because they employ sympathetic values and identifiable conventions, critics present 12 studies analyzing a selection of specific conventions, patterns, themes, and images and trace them back to origins in folktales or fairy tales and back again to the latest adaptations available in the supermarkets. No index. Paper edition (778-0), $21.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The first book-length study of romance novels to focus on issues of sexuality rather than gender, Historical Romance Fiction moves the ongoing debate about the value and appeal of heterosexual romance onto new ground, testing the claims of cutting-edge critical theorists on everything from popular classics by Georgette Heyer, to recent 'bodice rippers,' to historical fiction by John Fowles and A.S. Byatt. Beginning with her nomination of 'I love you' as the romance novel's defining speech act, Lisa Fletcher engages closely with speech-act theory and recent studies of performativity. The range of texts serves to illustrate Fletcher's definition of historical romance as a fictional mode depend...
Popular romance fiction constitutes the largest segment of the global book market. Bringing together an international group of scholars, The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction offers a ground-breaking exploration of this global genre and its remarkable readership. In recognition of the diversity of the form, the Companion provides a history of the genre, an overview of disciplinary approaches to studying romance fiction, and critical analyses of important subgenres, themes, and topics. It also highlights new and understudied avenues of inquiry for future research in this vibrant and still-emerging field. The first systematic, comprehensive resource on romance fiction, this Companion will be invaluable to students and scholars, and accessible to romance readers.
"Often derided as an inferior form of literature, "romance" as a literary mode or genre defies satisfactory definition, dividing critics, scholars and readers alike." "Romance is a clear and wide-ranging introduction for students of literary history, comparative literature and modern literary forms. It is also a convincing case for a literary concept too often set to one side."--BOOK JACKET.
"Find your one true love and live happily ever after." The trials of love and desire provide perennial story material, from the Biblical Song of Songs to Disney's princesses, but perhaps most provocatively in the romance novel, a genre known for tales of fantasy and desire, sex and pleasure. Hailed on the one hand for its women-centered stories that can be sexually liberating, and criticized on the other for its emphasis on male/female coupling and mythical happy endings, romance fiction is a multi-million dollar publishing phenomenon, creating national and international societies of enthusiasts, practitioners, and scholars. Catherine M. Roach, alongside her romance-writer alter-ego, Catherine LaRoche, guides the reader deep into Romancelandia where the smart and the witty combine with the sexy and seductive to explore why this genre has such a grip on readers and what we can learn from the romance novel about the nature of happiness, love, sex, and desire in American popular culture.
Originally published in 1984, Reading the Romance challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most lucrative categories, captivates millions of women readers. Among those who have disparaged romance reading are feminists, literary critics, and theorists of mass culture. They claim that romances enforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of the repressive ideology purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing that critical attention "must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading." She examines that event, from the complicated business of publishing and distrib...
Laura Vivanco's study challenges the idea that Harlequin Mills & Boon romances are merely mass-produced commodities, churned out in accordance with a strict and unchanging formula. She argues that many are well-written, skilfully crafted works, and that some are small masterpieces. For Love and Money demonstrates the variety that exists beneath the covers of Harlequin Mills & Boon romances. They range from paranormal romances to novels resembling chick lit, and many have addressed serious issues, including the plight of post-Second World War refugees, threats to marine mammals, and HIV/AIDS. The genre draws inspiration from Shakespearean comedies and Austen's novels, as well as from other fo...
-- Booklist