1st Edition

Routledge Revivals: The Progress of Romance (1986) The Politics of Popular Fiction

Edited By Jean Radford Copyright 1986
    252 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    252 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    First published in 1986, the aim of this book is to present some of the changing thinking on popular writing to a wider audience in view of the enormous growth of mass culture after the war, but also to offer a historical perspective on a specific form of popular fiction: the romance. The essays collected here reflect diverse positions and methods in the current debate: sociological, psychoanalytic and literary. Some focus more on texts or readers, others concentrate on theoretical questions about narrative or ideology. All of the essays, however, view popular forms and their uses historical in historical context — rejecting the notion they are a contaminated by-product of industrialism.

    Contributors; 1 Introduction Jean Radford 2 The Greek romance Margaret Williamson 3 The politics of seduction in English popular culture, 1748-1848 Anne Clark 4 How Green Was My Valley: a romance of Wales Derrick Price 5 An inverted romance: The Well of Loneliness and sexual ideology Jean Radford 6 Gone With the Wind: the mammy of them all Helen Taylor 7 Writing fictions: femininity and the 1950s Alison Light 8 Family romances: the contemporary popular family saga Christine Bridgwood 9 Mills & Boon meets feminism Anna Rosalind Jones 10 Write, she said Michele Roberts; Index

    Biography

    Jean Radford