These are the tools of my trade thus far. I owe everyone at Teach Me Tonight for setting me on the trail of many of these books.
McKnight-Trontz, Jennifer. The Look of Love: The Art of the Romance Novel. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.
I snatched this one up because of its wonderful cover, and the graphics inside lived up to this standard. The accompanying text, however, I found disappointing. The book was strongest when it stuck with the evolution of mass market cover design and weakest when it strayed into more literary issues.
Modleski, Tania. Loving with a Vengeance, Second Edition. New York: Routledge, 2008.
I’m working my way through this one. Thus far it’s interesting, if not spellbinding.
Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
So very useful and handy-dandy. While there are certainly points that I disagreed with, (for example, I think she was too uncritical in incorporating Krentz’s views on the hero into her analysis) I loved this book. Regis bothers to define what she means when she says things like “romance,” which actually puts her ahead of the game. She also gives the romance a long and generous pedigree with a few judicious close-readings of key texts. Anthro-stuff and a consideration of reading communities was pretty limited, which actually was a nice change of pace from the normal “why do these women read such things?” study.
Weisser, Susan Ostrov. Women and Romance, a reader. New York: New York Univeristy Press, 2001.
So handy to have around as it bridges the gap between romance genre issues and larger feminist and anti-feminist debates over women, romantic love, and texts.
