The Smithsonian Magazine has published a long and thoughtful article on why romance fiction is ignored, and not studied seriously.
Kathleen Woodiwiss’s bodice ripper "The Flame and the Flower" was a stunning success way back in the early 1970s, yet scholars still deride the genre of romance with exactly the same arguments they used 250 years ago. And this is despite EL James and the Fifty Shades books being the fastest selling paperbacks of all time.
In 2007, Frantz Lyons started the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance along with Professor Eric Selinger, a scholar of American poetry who teaches popular romance at DePaul University in Chicago. The IASPR has hosted conferences worldwide and in 2010 launched a peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Popular Romance Studies. Their hope is for a scholarship foundation at a PhD-hosting institution and a full-fledged graduate program.
It will be interesting to see what happens next.
Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com
Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.
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