I am not a romance scholar but I have read enough to know that the representation Hollows provides of the genre is not hopelessly outdated. It also works for me pedagogically, because this is an undergraduate class, and Hollows’s text provides an introductory overview. Also Hollows’s chapter situates romance within popular culture studies and women’s studies, rather than literary criticism, and that was what I needed for this unit.

As for “the academy’s stance on popular romance”, I don’t think there is one, or rather, I think we can speak of that only in a superficial way. We may be able to point to greater acceptance of popular culture and popular literature as worthy objects of academic attention, and the romance genre in the 20th century as having benefited from that. But as you can see from Eric Selinger’s review of recent romance scholarship Laura Vivanco’s summary here, different folks are working on pretty specific topics and questions. That’s a sign, in my opinion, of the growing acceptability of romance as a topic of academic attention, that people no longer have to defend study of the genre as a whole, but can launch directly in to study of particular texts and themes.

I don’t know whether such scholarship can get published in traditional literature journals, as opposed to, say, pop culture journals. The IASPR folks would know that. The launch of a new journal dedicated to popular romance studies suggests the existing climate is wanting in some way. I think the situation in philosophy of literature is probably about 10 years behind the literature and pop culture segments of academia.

There is a RomanceWiki which is a great resource. Also Teach Me Tonight.

I am generally dubious about high/low or literary/genre distinctions (one reason I love blogs like yours is that the discussions of romance here move so freely across these borders). I think people like Booth and Said make their arguments on the backs of the Usual Suspects not because they could not make them about popular/genre fiction, but because they want to be taken seriously as they try to expand the range of questions asked in their disciplines.

Looking at your reading list (and it looks like a fascinating class) I wondered if that concern had also influenced you: you have rounded up some Usual Suspects here (though also some new faces) and you frame your inclusion of Gaffney as if you are uncertain about it. Does that partly have to do with Phil. as a field? I don’t think twice about including some genre/popular texts in my reading lists. I wondered if, in the way you frame your questions about Gaffney, you are making it easy to pick her out of the lineup as the villain. Given all I’ve read about the book in Romancelandia and the debates it has engendered, I’m not sure I’d say it has no ethical value.

That said, I firmly believe some books are–ethically and aesthetically–better than others and I would not hesitate to set a match to a pile of all the extant copies of Rainbow Fish (ugh! fails on both counts). Good thing I’m not a philosopher, as I’m so self-contradictory.

I wonder if part of the issue with genre fiction is that because it is largely governed by conventions, it has a more “closed” moral system than most (contemporary, anyway) literary fiction. By that I mean, we expect an HEA from romance, and I think we also expect a book whose basic ethical view is that love has saving power; I’m not the first to point that out, of course. It reinforces beliefs we may already have, or at least beliefs we expect it to have.

I was thinking of this when reading your discussion of Black Ice, about some people’s discomfort with romantic suspense and the amoral hero. The “problem” with such books, perhaps, is that you have clashing moral codes: the “female” ethic of love, care, relationship and the “male” ethic of justice or a warrior’s code of some kind. Opposites can attract, but they can also fit together quite awkwardly. In gendering the genres that way I’m following difference feminists like Carol Gilligan (don’t love In A Different Voice but it makes some sense here).

Thanks for a blog post that kept me up pondering. I should shut up, or just get my own blog. Sorry.

Sounds like a great class!

Le commandant mit ses lorgnons et regarda sa liste:
-Steinbock… Steinbock… Voilà. Vous êtes condamné à mort.
(Le mur, 15)

In the terms bandied about romancelandia, nonfiction would try to tell about it. Fiction can show it.

Also: see the latest issue of Harper’s. There’s a nice selection of interviews under the title Huis claws, by Jean Paul Sartre and John Gerassi.

I haven’t read the Gaffney in question. I’m obviously going to have to do so, after the discussions recently!

I love the idea of this class. It reminds me of a class I had in grad school on political theatre, which began with an essay by the playwright Tom Stoppard, who wrote, “The plain truth is that if you are angered or disgusted by a particular injustice or immorality, and you want to do something about it, now, at once, then you can hardly do worse than write a play about it.” It was a great class.

Now off to look through my LeGuins for parades!

@dh: Hello dear. Why aren’t you home yet?

@Sherry Thomas: Never saw the parade connection – but you’re right!

It is an unforgettable story. For my money, probably the most thought-provoking SFF short story ever.

I read it and have mostly forgotten the details, though I remember the moral question at its center. Perhaps because I felt it was trying too hard to make its point, or perhaps I had been asking myself questions like that long before I read it, it didn’t speak to me. On the other hand I love love love The Left Hand of Darkness.

What does “The Moral Connections of Literary Texts?” say, Jessica?

Abraham B. Yehoshua is the author of one of my favorite novellas, the brilliant “Three Days and a Child.” In Hebrew it is *the* awesome, but unfortunately, the English translation sucks so bad. However if by any chance anyone here can read or even just comprehend spoken Hebrew, I urge you to read this novella or get it on CD.

Can’t wait for the posts on the Gaffney lectures.