By MAWP student Brittany Petersen Read the first part of this topic in Brittany’s previous post: “The Girl and the Romance Novel, Part One.” As I’ve discussed in my previous post, the romance genre has a simple formula that doesn’t necessarily include sex or an unflattering portrayal of women: An authentic love story (or at least lust story) with a happy ending. That’s all we ask. Even if people are cool with the sex scenes and the perceived portrayal of women, the happy ending bit might still give pause, and for that we blame Aristotle…. Read Article →
Posts Tagged: erotica
By MAWP student Brittany Petersen As we finish up the chocolates, watch the balloons deflate and lay Valentine’s Day 2011 to bed, it seems appropriate to turn back to the source from which we as English students and authors get our romantic fix the other 364 days of the year: romance literature. Wait—you do read romance novels, right? The romance genre is an easy target for criticism (we’ll get to that), and yet it’s one of the most profitable of the fiction categories: In 2008, out of more than 47,000 fiction books published in the… Read Article →