(Brief notes on papers given at the PCA-ACA Conference in St. Louis)
Thursday April 1
Romance III: Nora Roberts: Food, Community, and Voice
Session Chair: An Goris, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven/DePaul University
“Recipes and Rituals: Food and Religion in Nora Roberts’ Three Sisters Island Trilogy”‖ Tessa Kostelc, The George Washington University
Through close textual analysis, this paper demonstrates importance of food and its connections to spirituality and mysticism, and to romance in this trilogy.
Circle Trilogy (2006) – Morrigan’s Cross, Dance of the Gods, Valley of Silence.
Heroine’s understanding of the kitchen spills over into her understanding of Wicca, the religion of her ancestors and new friends on circle island.
And then she compares that to relationships – time, originality, imagination, care – all ingredients of recipes, Wicca, and romance.
Further, food creates communal bonds – centrality of café, of group meals.
“Lights, Audiobooks, Action!: The Recreation of Narrative Voice in Nora Roberts’s The Circle Trilogy”‖ Glinda Hall, University of Arkansas
Notes the importance of voice to romance readers. She has a hard time with Nora Roberts. Notes that when she listened to the Circle Trilogy on audio during a 4 hour commute, she was hooked.
Does the performance reinvent the author’s voice, creating another community of romance readers.
She is a fan of NR’s performed word, but not her written word. NR as a storyteller – GH is a fan of her stories but in a particular form.
Issues of marginalization of the performed text parallel in some ways issues of marginalization in the genre.
[Later, someone suggested that Nora works well on audio because she tends not to write in complete sentences.]
“Let’s Keep It in the Family: Nora Roberts’ Connected Books”‖ An Goris
Theme of family and community crucial to NR’s oeuvre (200+ books, 400 million in print).
Connected book format –which had been new in early 1990s, shift in genre and its publication practices
Genre of romance seems at first resistant to connected series, since each novel has a definitive ending
Also hesitation because of publication practices, of M&B, Harlequin, Silhouette in 1970s and 80s: focus in marketing on genre not novel itself. Not geared towards relevantly distinguishing novels.
Two-Three decades ago generic conventions were more dominant.
Moved from line driven to author driven genre. (title and author smaller type than words “Silhouette Special Edition”)
Roberts’ first use of connected books format was in 1985, 4 books about MacGregor siblings for Silhouette.
Typically, HEA is more of a promise than narratively portrayed in any depth. NR excels at fulfilling promise of HEA in subsequent books.
When SSE reissue these every few years, title and author are emphasized a little bit more, until in 2006 her name is the biggest thing on the page.
1991 Calhoun sisters novels for Silhouette Desire. First time connection is noted in marketing, with a special Calhoun logo on each book. (Courting Catherine, etc.)
Yet each book lives up to its generic identification – courtship narrative with HEA.
Power balance between genre conventions and individuals author.
Circle Trilogy 2006. They no longer function independently. Romance narrative relies on all books.
Relationship between genre and author has now changed.
The tendency to write families and communities was always there in NR. But it developed over her career in ways that changed the genre, its narrative and publication practices.
Now connected books are very popular in genre. Notes that this individuating dynamic is not much studies in popular romance criticism.
We need to incorporate tendencies to individuation in our criticism, in addition to emphasis on genre.
[Sarah Frantz asks the first question, noting that it was in fact Sam and Alyssa, Suzanne Brockman’s characters, who first began their courtship in a book in which they don’t have their HEA.]
Disclaimer: These summaries are just one person’s interpretation, which is fallible. To follow up, click this link to contact the speakers for more information.
I am excited by the idea of someone studying the difference between written and performed narrative. Performed stories that are meant for listening are profoundly different from stories meant to be read off a page, but a look at the reverse idea never occurred to me. The narrator would bring another level of interpretation to the prose.
I’m now thinking of how reading Shakespeare is so different from seeing it performed.
As I told Jessica, I feel some of the points I made in the paper are presented in a somewhat unnuanced way in Jessica’s blog post. For my more detailed comments, please see my comments to Laura Vivanco’s post on this paper over at Teach Me Tonight
best,
An
Wish I’d been able to come to this panel because 1) I love food. and 2) I’ve been leary of getting audiobooks of romance novels because, for certain scenes (sex scenes in particular) it strikes me that the written word provides the right amount of distance. I can skim those scenes or re-read them as I like. The immediacy of listening — a captive audience, if you will — strikes me as being potentially uncomfortable. I’m willing to try it, though! And, like Victoria, I love the discussion of written vs spoken word interpretations.
LOL, I am certainly not aiming for “nuance” in these brief summaries and I can only hope that by labeling them “brief notes”, making explicit disclaimers, and suggesting that readers contact the authors for clarification, I have communicated that adequately.
As I mentioned when we chatted, I am happy to edit or delete the thing entirely.
Thanks, An, for taking the time to comment here and to elaborate your views over at TMT. I enjoyed your paper, and your panel, very very much.
I think you’ve been very clear, Jessica. For those of us who can’t attend PCA, it’s wonderful to have these notes. I have already followed up on a couple that I found interesting, and I would not have known to do that if you and others weren’t tweeting/blogging the proceedings. So thank you!!