Bibliography P-S

Items with the "**" have not been personally checked. This means that the details given in the entry may not be entirely accurate.

From this page you may return to the main Romance Scholarship page or go directly to

• Bibliography A-G - the first half of our bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
• Bibliography H-O - the second part of the bibliography of academic articles and books about romance.
• Academic Online Essays (not published in academic journals or volumes)
• Dissertation Abstracts
• Scholarship in Languages Other than English.
• Romance Resources for Academics - lists romance-related resources which may be of interest to academics.
• Writers on Romance - lists items written about the genre by romance authors but not published in academic journals or books.
• Romance in the Media - lists news items/features items about romance.

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P

Paizis, George, 1987. 

'"Putting People First" or the contemporary romantic novel, critical discourse and ideology', La Chouette, no 18, March: 38-46. [La Chouette is published by the Department of French, School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture, Birkbeck College, University of London] **

Paizis, George, 1987. 

'That's Romance', Socialist Review, July: 24. **

Paizis, George, 1994-95. 

'Love, Ideology and Reality: the popular romantic novel and the reader', Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, 3: 357-68. **

Paizis, George, 1998. 

'Category Romances - Translation, Realism and Myth', The Translator, 4: 1-24. Abstract

Paizis, George, 1998. 

Love and the Novel: The Poetics and Politics of Romantic Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan). Some details **

Parameswaran Radhika, 1999. 

'Western Romance Fiction as English-Language Media in Postcolonial India', Journal of Communication, 49.3: 84-105. Abstract

Parameswaran, Radhika, 2002. 

'Reading Fictions of Romance: Gender, Sexuality, and Nationalism in Postcolonial India', Journal of Communication, 52.4: 832-851. Abstract

Patthey Chavez, GG, and L. Clare, M. Youmans,1996. 

'Watery passion: The struggle between hegemony and sexual liberation in erotic fiction for women.' Discourse and Society. 7.1: 77-106.

Pearce, Lynne, 2004. 

"Popular Romance and Its Readers." in A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary. ed. Corinne Saunders, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, pp. 521-538.

Philips, Deborah, 1990. 'Mills and Boon

The Marketing of Moonshine,' in Consumption, Identity, and Style: Marketing, Meanings, and the Packaging of Pleasure, ed. Alan Tomlinson (London: Routledge), pp. 139-52. Excerpt here.

Philips, Deborah, 2000. 

'Shopping for Men: The Single Woman Narrative', Women: a Cultural Review, 11.3: 238-251. Abstract

Proctor, Candice, 2007. 

'The Romance Genre Blues or Why We Don't Get No Respect.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 12-19.

Purdie, Susan, 1992. 

'Janice Radway, Reading the Romance', in Reading into Cultural Studies ed. Martin Barker and Anne Beezer, (London: Routledge), pp. 148-64.

Puri, Jyoti, 1997. 

‘Reading Romance Novels in Postcolonial India’, Gender & Society, 11.4: 434-452. Abstract

R

Rabine, Leslie W., 1985. 

‘Romance in the Age of Electronics: Harlequin Enterprises’, Feminist Studies 11.1: 39-60.

Radford, Jean, 1992. 

"A Certain Latitude: Romance as Genre." in Gender, Language, and Myth: Essays and Popular Narrative. ed. Glenwood Irons, (Toronto: U of Toronto P), pp. 3-19.

Radway, Janice, 1981. 

'The Utopian Impulse in Popular Literature: Gothic Romances and "Feminist" Protest', American Quarterly, 33.2 (Summer, 1981): 140-162. [First page available here]

Radway, Janice A., 1983. 

‘Women Read the Romance: The Interaction of Text and Context’, Feminist Studies, 9.1: 53-78. [First page available here]

Radway, Janice A., 1984. 

'Interpretive Communities And Variable Literacies: The Functions Of Romance Reading', Daedalus, 113.3:49-73.

Radway, Janice A., 1991. 

Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press). First published in 1984. The 1991 edition contains a new introduction by the author.

Radway, Janice, 1994. 

'Romance and the Work of Fantasy: Struggles over Feminine Sexuality and Subjectivity at Century's End', in Viewing, Reading, Listening: Audiences and Cultural Reception, ed. Jon Cruz and Justin Lewis (Colorado: Westview Press), pp. 213-31. Reprinted in Feminism and Cultural Studies, ed. Morag Shiach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 395-???. **

Ramsdell, Kristin, 1999. 

'The Literature of Romance: A Librarian's Viewpoint', originally published in Romance Writers' Report 19 (June 1999): 37-39.[1]

Rapp, Adrian, Dodgen, Lynda, and Anne K. Kaler, 2000. 

"A Romance Writer Gets Away with Murder." Clues: A Journal of Detection 21.1: 17-21.

Rasley, Alicia, 1999. 

'Paradox in Balance: Some Feminist Themes in Romance', originally published in North American Romance Writers, see above.[2]

Raub, Patricia, 1992.

"Issues of Passion and Power in E. M. Hull's The Sheik." Women's Studies, 21: 119-128.

Reep, Diana, 1982

The Rescue And Romance: Popular Novels Before World War I, Bowling Green Sate University Popular Press.

Regis, Pamela., 1997. 

'Complicating Romances and Their Readers: Barrier and Point of Ritual Death in Nora Roberts's Category Fiction.' Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2:145-154.

Regis, Pamela, 2003. 

A Natural History of the Romance Novel (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press).

Ricker-Wilson, Carol, 1999. 

‘Busting Textual Bodices: Gender, Reading, and the Popular Romance’, English Journal, 88:3: 57-64.

Roberts, Sherron Killingsworth, 2002. 

'Meet Jessica and Elizabeth from Sweet Valley: Who Are the Female Role Models in Popular Romance Novels for Children?', Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA, April 1-5, 2002). 21 pgs. ERIC document ED470819.

Romantic Conventions, 1999. 

Anne K. Kaler and Rosemary E. Johnson-Kurek, eds. (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press).

Rose, Suzanna, 1985. 

"Is Romance Dysfunctional?." International Journal of Women's Studies, 8.3: 250-265.

Ruggiero, Josephine A. and Weston, Louise C., 1983. 

'Conflicting Images Of Women In Romance Novels', International Journal of Women's Studies, 6.1:18-25.

Ryder, M. E., 1999. 

'Smoke and mirrors: Event patterns in the discourse structure of a romance novel', Journal of Pragmatics, 31.8: 1067-1080. Abstract **

S

Sales, Roger, 1999. 

"The Loathsome Lord and the Disdainful Dame: Byron, Cartland and the Regency Romance." in Byromania: Portraits of the Artist in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Culture. ed. Frances Wilson, (Basingstoke, England; New York, NY: Macmillan; St. Martin's) pp. 166-183.

Samuel, Barbara, 1997. 

"The Art of Romance Novels." Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2: 78-80.

Santaulària, Isabel, 2002. 

"The Fallacy of Eternal Love: Romance, Vampires and Love in Linda Lael Miller's Forever and the Night and For All Eternity." in The Aesthetics of Ageing: Critical Approaches to Literary Representations of the Ageing Process.(Lleida, Spain: Universitat de Lleida), pp. 111-126.

Scott, Alison M. 2002. 

'Romance in the Stacks; or, Popular Romance Fiction Imperiled', in Scorned Literature: Essays on the History and Criticism of Popular Mass-Produced Fiction in America, ed. Lydia Cushman Schurman and Deidre Johnson, Contributions to the Study of Popular Culture, 75 (Westport, CT: Greenwood),pp. 213-224.

Seale,Maura, 2007. 

'"I find some Hindu practices, like burning widows, utterly bizarre": Representation of Sati and Questions of Choice in Veils of Silk.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 129-147. Unpaginated version

Selinger, Eric Murphy, 2007. 

'Rereading the Romance', Contemporary Literature, 48.2: 307-324.[3] [This is a review article, critiquing earlier works on the romance genre (such as those by Radway and Modleski) and giving more favourable opinions about the newer works under review: Juliet Flesch's From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels; Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty-First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels, edited by Sally Goade; Deborah Lutz's The Dangerous Lover: Gothic Villains, Byronism, and the Nineteenth-Century Seduction Narrative; Lynn S. Neal's Romancing God: Evangelical Women and Inspirational Fiction; Pamela Regis's A Natural History of the Romance Novel.]

Shapiro, Joan, & Lee Kroeger, 1991. 

‘Is Life a Romantic Novel? The Relationship Between Attitudes About Intimate Relationships and the Popular Media’, American Journal of Family Therapy, 19.3: 226-236. **

Shibamoto Smith, Janet S., 2004. 

'Language and Gender in the (Hetero)Romance: "Reading" the Ideal Hero/ine through Lovers' Dialogue in Japanese Romance Fiction', in Japanese Language, Gender, and Ideology: Cultural Models and Real People, ed. Shigeko Okamoto and Janet S. Shibamoto Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 113-130. ** Review

Shibamoto-Smith, Janet S., 2005. 

‘Translating True Love: Japanese Romantic Fiction, Harlequin-Style’ in Gender, Sex and Translation: The Manipulation of Identities, ed. José Santaemilia (Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing), pp. 97-116. ** Summary

Smith, Faith, 1999. 

"Beautiful Indians, Troublesome Negroes, and Nice White Men: Caribbean Romances and the Invention of Trinidad." in Caribbean Romances: The Politics of Regional Representation. ed. Belinda Edmondson (Charlottesville, VA: UP of Virginia) pp. 163-182.

Snitow, Ann Barr, 1979. 

‘Mass Market Romance: Pornography for Women is Different’, Radical History Review 20 (Spring/Summer 1979):141-61. Republished in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality 1983., ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell & Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press), pp. 245-263. Republished in "Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader", ed. Mary Eagleton. New York: Basil Blacwell, 1986.

Spehner, Norbert, 1997. 

'L'Amour, toujours l'amour ...: The Popular Love Story and Romance: A Basic Checklist of Secondary Sources.',Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2:253-268.

Stacey, Jackie & Lynne Pearce, 1995. 

'The Heart of the Matter: Feminists Revisit Romance', in Romance Revisited, ed. Lynne Pearce & Jackie Stacey (New York: New York University Press), pp. 11-45.

Stieg, Margaret F., 1985. 

'Indian Romances: Tracts for the Times', Journal of Popular Culture, 18.4: 2-15. ['the Indian Romance, flourished between 1890 and 1930. It was a romantic novel set in India, featuring Anglo-Indians (English expatriates living in India) as the leading characters.' (1985: 2)]

Stotesbury, John A, 1994. 

"Language and Mindstyle in Anglophone Popular Romantic Fiction under Apartheid." Logos 14: 18-32.

Stotesbury, John A., 2004 

'Genre and Islam in Recent Anglophone Romantic Fiction', in Refracting the Canon in Contemporary British Literature and Film, ed. Christian Gutleben & Susana Onega, Postmodern Studies, 35 (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 69-82. Abstract **

Stowers, Eva, 2007. 

'City of Fantasy: Romance Novels in Las Vegas.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 198-205.

Sucatre, Conrad V., 2005 

Old School Romance (Vintage Romance Publishing).** [I have not been able to identify a place of publication, and clearly this is not an academic publisher. The author says that the book is about 'the romance writing industry as it existed prior to 1950. At my fingertips were the books and biographies of such authors as Faith Baldwin, Emilie Loring, Kathleen Norris, Temple Bailey, Elsa Barker and many others. I assembled all these facts into my book'.[4] ]

Swaffield, Audrey-Claire, 1981. 

"Paperbacks Promoting Passion! What Is Harlequin Really Presenting?." Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme 3.2: 4-6.

T

Taylor, Helen, 1989. 

'Romantic Readers" in From My Guy to Sci-Fi;Genre and Women's Writing in the Postmodern World., ed. Helen Carr, (London: Pandora), pp. 58-77.

Taylor, Jessica, 2007. 

"And You Can Be My Sheikh: Gender, Race, and Orientalism in Contemporary Romance Novels." Journal of Popular Culture 40.6: 1032-1051.

Tegan, Mary Beth, 2007. 

'Becoming Both Poet and Poem: Feminists Repossess the Romance.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp.231-?.

Teo, Hsu-Ming, 1999. 

'Shanghaied By Sheiks: Orientalism and hybridity in women's romance writing', Olive Pink Society Bulletin, 11.1: 12–21.

Teo, Hsu-Ming, 2003. 

'The Romance of White Nations: Imperialism, Popular Culture and National Histories', in After the Imperial Turn: Thinking with and through the Nation, ed. Antoinette Burton (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press). **

Teo, Hsu-Ming, 2004. 

'Romancing the Raj: Interracial Relations in Anglo-Indian Romance Novels', History of Intellectual Culture, 4.1.[5]

Tetel Andresen, Julie, 1999. 

'Postmodern Identity (Crisis): Confessions of a Linguistic Historiographer and Romance Writer', in Romantic Conventions, see above, pp. 173-???. **

Thomas, Audrey, 1986. 

'A Fine Romance, My Dear, This Is,' Canadian Literature, no. 108:5-12.

Thomas , Glen, 2007. 

'Romance: The Perfect Creative Industry? A Case Study of Harlequin-Mills and Boon Australia.' in Empowerment versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels. ed. Sally Goade, (Newcastle, U.K.:Cambridge Scholars Pub.) pp. 20-29.

Thompson, Anne Booth, 2005. 

'Rereading Fifties Teen Romance: Reflections on Janet Lambert', The Lion and the Unicorn, 29.3:373-96. Abstract

Thompson, M., P. Koski, and L. Holyfield, 1997. 

"Romance and Agency: An Argument Revisited." Sociological Spectrum 17.4: 437-51.

Thurston,Carol M., 1985. 

‘Popular Historical Romances: Agent for Social Change? An Exploration of Methodologies’, Journal of Popular Culture, 19:1: 35-45.

Thurston, Carol, 1987. 

The Romance Revolution: Erotic Novels for Women and the Quest for a New Sexual Identity (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press).

Timson, Beth S., 1983 

‘The Drug Store Novel: Popular Romantic Fiction and the Mainstream Tradition’, Studies in Popular Culture, 6: 88-96. **

Tobin-McClain, Lee, 2000. 

"Paranormal Romance: Secrets of the Female Fantastic." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 11.3 [43]: 294-306. A version is available online here

Trachsel, Mary, 1997. 

'Horse Stories and Romance Fiction: Variants or Alternative Texts of Female Identity?', Reader: Essays in Reader-Oriented Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy , 38-39: 20-41.

Treacher, Amal, 1988. 

‘What is life without my love: Desire and romantic fiction’, in Sweet Dreams – Sexuality, Gender and Popular Fiction, ed. Susannah Radstone (London: Lawrence & Wishart), pp. 73-90.

Ty, Eleanor, 1994. 

'Desire and Temptation: Dialogism and the Carnivalesque in Category Romances', in A Dialogue of Voices: Approaches to Feminist Literary Theory and Bakhtin, ed. Karen Hohne and Helen Wussow (University of Minnesota Press), pp. 97-113.**

V

Voaden, Rosalynn, 1995. 

'The Language of Love: Medieval Erotic Vision and Modern Romance Fiction', in Romance Revisited , ed. Jackie Stacey and Lynne Pearce (New York: New York UP), pp. 78-88.

W

Wardrop, Stephanie, 1995. 

"The Heroine is Being Beaten: Freud, Sadomasochism, and Reading the Romance." Style 29: 459-73. Unpaginated and unofficial copy

Wardrop, Stephanie, 1997. 

'Last of the Red Hot Mohicans: Miscegenation in the Popular American Romance', MELUS, 22. 2, Popular Literature and Film: 61-74. Unpaginated and unofficial copy

Wareing, Shan, 1994. 

'And Then He Kissed Her: The Reclamation of Female Characters to Submissive Roles in Contemporary Fiction', in Feminist Linguistics in Literary Criticism, ed. Katie Wales, Essays and Studies, 47 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer), pp. 117-36.

Watson, Daphne, 1995. 

Their Own Worst Enemies; Women Writers of Women's Fiction. (London: Pluto Press). Chapter on 'Two for the Price of One; the novels of Mills and Boon' pp. 75-94.

Weir, Angela, and Elizabeth Wilson, 1992.

"The Greyhound Bus Station in the Evolution of Lesbian Popular Culture." in New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and Cultural Readings ed. Sally Munt (New York: Columbia UP) pp. 95-113. .

Weisser, Susan Ostrov. 1994. 

'The Wonderful-Terrible Bitch Figure in Harlequin Novels', in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds: Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood, ed. Susan Ostrov Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner (New York: New York University Press), pp. 269-82. **

Westman, Karin E., 2003. 

'A Story of Her Weaving: The Self-Authoring Heroines of Georgette Heyer's Regency Romance', in Doubled Plots: Romance and History, see above, pp. 165-184. **

Whissell, Cynthia, 1996. 

‘Mate Selection in Popular Women's Fiction’, Human Nature, 7: 427-447. **

Whissell, Cynthia, 1998. 

'The Formula Behind Women's Romantic Formula Fiction (Statistical survey of 50 Harlequin-Presents novels)', Arachne, 5.1:89-119. [The online text available here may only be an extract from the original as it is extremely short and has no page-numbers]

Whitsitt, Novian, 2003. 

"Islamic-Hausa Feminism Meets Northern Nigerian Romance: The Cautious Rebellion of Bilkisu Funtuwa." African Studies Review 46.1: 137-53. Unofficial, unpaginated version

Whitsitt, Novian, 2003. 

"Hausa Women Writers Confronting the Traditional Status of Women in Modern Islamic Society: Feminist Thought in Nigerian Popular Fiction." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 22.2: 387-408.

Williams, Clover, and Jean R. Freedman, 1995. 

"Shakespeare's Step-Sisters: Romance Novels and the Community of Women." in Folklore, Literature, and Cultural Theory: Collected Essays. ed. Cathy Lynn Preston (New York, NY: Garland) pp. 135-168.

Williams, Clover, 1998. 

"Keepers of the Flame: The Romance Novel and Its Fans." Lore and Language 16.1-2: 115-138.

Williams, Jeffrey J., 2006. 

"The Culture of Books: An Interview with Janice Radway." Minnesota Review: A Journal of Committed Writing. ns 65-66: 133-148. [6]

Wirtén, Eva Hemmungs, 1998. 

' "They Seek It Here, They Seek It There, They Seek It Everywhere": Looking for the "Global" Book', Canadian Journal of Communication, 23.2.[7]['this article uses Harlequin's Stockholm office as a case study for a closer look at just how Harlequin romances are transposed from one cultural context into another']. According to the author's website This is an abbreviated version of a chapter from her thesis, the details of, and a link for which, are provided on the page for dissertation abstracts.

Wood, Helen, 2004. 

'What Reading the Romance Did for Us', European Journal of Cultural Studies, 7.2:147-54. [This is about the place of Radway's Reading the Romance in the history/development of cultural studies]

Wood, Julia T., 2001. 

'The normalization of violence in heterosexual romantic relationships: Women's narratives of love and violence', Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 18.2: 239-261.** There is an abstract and a press release reporting Wood's findings.

Woodruff, Juliette, 1985. 

'A spate of words, full of sound & fury, signifying nothing: or, How to read in Harlequin', Journal of Popular Culture, 19.2 :25-32.

Wu, Huei-Hsia. 2006. 

'Gender, Romance Novels and Plastic Sexuality in the United States: A Focus on Female College Students', Journal of International Women’s Studies, 8.1: 125-134.[8]

Wyatt, Neal, Georgine Olsen, Kristen Ramsdell, Joyce Saricks, and Lynne Welch, 2008. 

'Core Collections in Genre Studies: Romance Fiction 101', Reference & User Services Quarterly, 47.2: 120-126.[9]

Y

Young, Beth Rapp, 1997. 

"Accidental Authors, Random Readers, and the Art of Popular Romance." Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres 3.1-2: 29-45.

Z

Zidle, Abby, 1999. 

'From Bodice-Ripper to Baby-Sitter: The New Hero in Mass-Market Romance', in Romantic Conventions, see above, pp. 23-24. **