Reading the romance : women, patriarchy and popular literature
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Reading the romance : women, patriarchy and popular literature
(Questions for feminism)
Verso, 1987, c1984
Available at 10 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Originally published: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1984
Includes bibliography and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Janice Radway challenges popular (and often demeaning) myths about why romantic fiction, one of publishing's most profitable categories, captivates millions of female readers. Many feminists, literary critics and theorists of mass culture have claimed that romances reinforce the woman reader's dependence on men and acceptance of repressive ideologies purveyed by popular culture. Radway questions such claims, arguing instead that critical attention 'must shift from the text itself, taken in isolation, to the complex social event of reading'.
Reading the Romance investigates that social event, from the complex structures of publishing and distribution to the individual reader's active engagement with the text. Using a provocative approach that combines reader-response criticism with anthropology and feminist psychoanalysis, Radway asked forty-two readers to explore their reading motives, habits and rewards. She found that while the women in this group used their reading of romantic fiction both to protest against and to temporarily escape from the limited roles prescribed for them by patriarchal culture, the romances paradoxically make those roles seem desirable.
by "Nielsen BookData"