Table Of ContentRomance Fiction and ameRican cultuRe
Since the 1970s, romance novels have surpassed all other genres in terms of
popularity in the united States, accounting for half of all mass market paperbacks
sold and driving the digital publishing revolution. Romance Fiction and American
Culture brings together scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and
publishing to explore American romance fiction from the late eighteenth to the early
twenty-first century. Essays on interracial, inspirational, and LGBTQ romance
attend to the diversity of the genre, while new areas of inquiry are suggested in
contextual and interdisciplinary examinations of romance authorship, readership,
and publishing history, of pleasure and respectability in african american romance
fiction, and of the dynamic tension between the genre and second wave feminism.
As it situates romance fiction among other instances of American love culture,
from Civil War diaries to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, Romance Fiction and
American Culture confirms the complexity and enduring importance of this most
contested of genres.
Romance Fiction and
american culture
love as the Practice of Freedom?
edited by
WiLLiAm A. GLEAson
Princeton University, USA
and EriC murphy sELinGEr
DePaul University, USA
First published 2016 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © William A. Gleason and Eric murphy selinger and the contributors 2016
William A. Gleason and Eric murphy selinger have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
romance fiction and american culture: love as the practice of freedom? / edited by William
A. Gleason and Eric murphy selinger.
pages cm
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-1-4724-3152-3 (hardcover: alk. paper) -- isBn 978-1-4724-3153-0 (pbk.)
1. Love stories, American--history and criticism. 2. American fiction--history and
criticism. 3. Literatureand society--united states--history. i. Gleason, William A., 1961–
editor.ii selinger, Ericmurphy, editor.
ps374.L6r65 2016
813’.08509--dc23
2015031577
isBn 9781472431523 (hbk)
isBn 9781472431530 (pbk.)
contents
List of Figures ix
Notes on Contributors xi
Acknowledgments xv
introduction: love as the Practice of Freedom? 1
Eric Murphy Selinger and William A. Gleason
PART I POPULAR ROMANCE AND AMERICAN HISTORY
1 Pamela Crosses the Atlantic; or, pamela Andrews’s story
inaugurates the American romance novel 25
Pamela Regis
2 “He Filled my Heart with doubt”:The southern Belle’s
Love and Duty in the Civil War 41
Amelia Serafine
3 Postbellum, Pre-Harlequin: american Romance Publishing
in the Late nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century 57
William A. Gleason
4 “i’m not the only Lesbian Who Wears a skirt”:lesbian Romance
Fiction and identity in post–World War ii America 71
Elizabeth Matelski
5 Strange Stirrings, Strange Yearnings: The Flame and the Flower,
Sweet Savage Love, and the Lost Diversities of Blockbuster
Historical Romance 89
Sarah Frantz Lyons and Eric Murphy Selinger
6 scripting Black Love in the 1990s:Pleasure, Respectability,
and responsibility in an Era of hiV/AiDs 111
Julie E. Moody-Freeman
PART II ROMANCE AND RACE
7 Kara Walker:American romance in Black and White 131
Rebecca Peabody
vi Romance Fiction and American Culture
8 love Prevailed despite What american History Said:
Agape and Eros in Beverly Jenkins’s Night Song and
Through the Storm 151
Rita B. Dandridge
9 Flipping the Script:romancing Zane’s urban Erotica 167
Conseula Francis
10 orientalism, Freedom, and Feminism in Popular
Romance culture 181
Hsu-Ming Teo
11 Saving china:the transformative Power of Whiteness
in Elizabeth Lowell’s Jade Island and Katherine stone’s
Pearl Moon 205
Erin S. Young
PART III ART AND COMMERCE
12 henry James’s “The Velvet Glove” and the iron Fist:
Transatlantic Cultural Exchange and the romance Tradition 225
June Hee Chung
13 Branding a Genre:A Brief Transatlantic history of romance
novel Cover Art 241
Jayashree Kamblé
14 love the market:discourses of Passion and Professionalism
in romance Writing Communities 273
Jessica Taylor
15 When i Paint my masterpiece:Bob Dylan, Ekphrasis,
and the Art of susan Elizabeth phillips 297
Eric Murphy Selinger
PART IV HAPPY ENDINGS
16 “Jesus loves your girl more than you do”:marriage as triangle
in Evangelical romance and puritan narratives 323
Lisa M. Gordis
17 christian Romance novels:inspiring Convention and Challenge 347
Rebecca Barrett-Fox
Contents vii
18 Love as the practice of Bondage:Popular Romance narratives
and the Conundrum of Erotic Love 369
Catherine M. Roach
19 Queer romance in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century America:
Snapshots of a Revolution 389
Len Barot
20 having it Both Ways; or, Writing from the Third perspective:
The revolutionary m/m/F ménage romance novel 405
Ann Herendeen
Index 421
list of Figures
2.1 “A Female rebel in Baltimore,” Harper’s Weekly,
september 7, 1861. 42
3.1 Charlotte m. Braeme, Wedded and Parted. Sweetheart
series no. 79 (new york: George munro’s sons, c. 1898).
Author’s collection. 68
7.1 Kara Walker, detail from The Battle of Atlanta: Being the
Narrative of a Negress in the Flames of Desire—A Reconstruction,
1995. Cut paper on wall. installation dimensions variable;
approximately 156 x 360 inches (396.2 x 914.4 cm).
© 1995 Kara Walker; Courtesy of sikkema Jenkins & Co.,
new york. 132
7.2 Kara Walker, Before the Battle (Chickin’ Dumplin’), 1995.
paper on canvas. 48 x 54 inches (121.9 x 173.2 cm).
© 1995 Kara Walker; Courtesy of sikkema Jenkins & Co.,
new york. 141
7.3 Kara Walker, detail from The Battle of Atlanta: Being the
Narrative of a Negress in the Flames of Desire—A Reconstruction,
1995. Cut paper on wall. installation dimensions variable;
approximately 156 x 360 inches (396.2 x 914.4 cm).
© 1995 Kara Walker; Courtesy of sikkema Jenkins & Co.,
new york. 143
7.4 Film still from The Balcony (1963), showing ruby Dee as
the Thief and peter Brocco as the Judge. Directed by Joseph
strick and written by Jean Genet (play) and Ben maddow
(screenplay). Appropriated film still, reprinted in Kara Walker:
The Renaissance Society at the university of Chicago, 1997. 144
13.1 arthur applin, The Girl Who Saved His Honour (London:
mills & Boon, 1914). 243
13.2 i. A. r. Wylie, Brodie and the Deep Sea (London: mills &
Boon, 1920). 243
13.3 anthony carlyle, The Fugitive Millionaire (London: mills &
Boon, 1922). 244
13.4 Denise robins, Slave-Woman (London: mills & Boon, 1934). 245
13.5 Dolf Wyllarde, The Undesigning Widow (London: mills &
Boon, 1927). 246
