Shelf Love: Romance Novel Discourse

Classic fairy tales Cinderella & Beauty and the Beast may have gotten their Disney-fication, but there are many ways to slide your feet into these glass (or are they fur?) slippers, and romance novels love to play with these tropes. Writer Renee Dahlia and podcaster Philippa Borland join the podcast to discuss fairytale retellings, reversions, and subversions in romance novels.

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Shelf Love:

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Discussed:

• Pod Culture Oz Episode: https://podcultureoz.com/ep11-fairytales/
• Fairy Tale Retellings resource: http://www.reneedahlia.com/2021/07/25/fairy-tale-retellings-updated/

Guests:

Renee Dahlia

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Books

Philippa Borland

Listen to Pod Culture Oz | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Shelf Love:

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What is beastliness? Little Red Riding Hood stories used to be tales of warning for young women to manage their sexuality in the face of the dangerous beasts of court, who were smooth on the outside, but hairy on the inside. In the 21st century, paranormal teen romances use enchantment to transform the beasts into objects of desire. Dr. Nicola Welsh-Burke, a scholar of fairy tales and romance, is here to discuss hot wolf boys, brooding Byronic figures, pseudomarriage and pseudovirginity, hot villain discourse, and why young women need beastly men to unlock their sexuality.

Shelf Love:

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Guest: Dr. Nicola Welsh-Burke
Twitter

Dr. Welsh-Burke is an academic and lecturer at Western Sydney University in Sydney, Australia. She’s an early-stage researcher in folklore and fairy tales and the romance genre, and her PhD was on contemporary YA supernatural romance, retellings of little red riding hood from the 21st century.f

Discussed:

Nicola’s Texts:

• Wolves of Mercy Falls Series by Maggie Stiefvater
• Sister's Red by Jackson Pierce
• Low Red Moon by Ivy Devlin
• Red Riding Hood, the novelization of the 2011 film

The Toast: A Day In The Life Of A Brooding Romantic Hero

Aarne-Thompson-Uther index

Little Red Riding Hood is: ATU 425

Famous Folklorists & scholars:

• Angela Carter: “hairy on the inside”
• Charles Perrault: “smooth-faced wolves”
• Countess d'Aulnoy: coined the term “fairytale”
• Cristina Bacchilega: “the fairy tale web”

Dr. Jodi McAllister: The Consummate Virgin

Dr. Christina Seifert: pseudovirginity

The complex fantasy (Diamond, 2011): to have the bad boy, to never come to harm, to have his wildness for one’s self.

Shelf Love:

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Junior novels were early romances for young readers, published in the 1940s-1960s. Learn from expert guest Dr. Amanda K. Allen how the didactic and heteronormative messages in these novels make a lot of sense when you consider that they were created to respond to demand from librarians and schools for “bibliotherapy” texts to “teach teenage girls how to be women,” which included winning that class ring and becoming besties with the popular girl who you’re not sure if you want to be or date.

Guest: Dr. Amanda K. Allen is a professor of children's and young adult literature.

Guest: Dr. Amanda K. Allen

Personal Website | Twitter | Academic Website

Amanda K. Allen researches American teen girl romance novels of the 1940s-1960s (known as "junior novels" or "malt shop books") in connection with the professional network of women (editors, librarians, booksellers, critics) who produced and distributed them. She also publishes on fan studies.

Shelf Love:

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Shelf Love:

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Funmi’s Beverly Jenkins collection is complete, and of course it includes the queen of Black historical romance’s young adult romances that were originally published in the short-lived Avon True Romance line in the early 2000s. We discuss Belle and the Beau and Josephine and the Soldier. Did these romances hit the spot for early aughts tweens? And why do we feel like the parental gaze is peering over our shoulder while we read it?

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Shelf Love:

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Discussed: Avon True Romances by Beverly Jenkins

• Belle and the Beau (2002)
• Belle (Kimani Tru reissue)
• Josephine and the Soldier (2003)
• Josephine (Kimani Tru reissue)

Guest: Funmi

Twitter | Instagram | Funmi in Fine Books & Collections magazine

Shelf Love:

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Jess joins Shelf Love to discuss the Sunfire romance that shares her name: Jessica by Mary Francis Shura. This historical teen romance from 1984 centers on a highly-competent, independent Kansas teen in 1873 and her many suitors: is the mad man who wins her heart the right guy or is he just the one who gets along best with her bad dad?

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Shelf Love:

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Discussed:

Jessica by Mary Francis Shura

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/841052.Jessica

Guest: Jess

Listen to Jess on Episode 047: Rose Lerner Double Header

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Sunfire, a historical romance series for young adults, debuted in 1982 with two books by Candice Ransom. 40 years later, Candice pulls back the curtain on her process and how Scholastic editor Ann Reit shaped the series, which was many young readers’ first taste of romance packaged in a girl’s adventure story.

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Guest: Candice Ransom

Website

Candice’s Blog post on Sunfires with pictures of retro promotional material

Shelf Love:

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A brief overview of romance for young adult readers throughout time, with a focus on the romance series boom of the 1980s and the reverberations into the early 2000s. Wildfire, Sunfire, Sweet Dreams, Oh My! But some people haven’t always been on board with young people consuming age-appropriate romance.

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Shelf Love:

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Resources:

Allen, Amanda K. “Young Adult Romance.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction. Routledge, 2020.

Madsen, Christine Terp. “Teen Novels: What Kind of Values Do They Promote?” Christian Science Monitor, December 17, 1981. https://www.csmonitor.com/1981/1217/121749.html.

Wagner, Elaine. “Protesting Sexist Materials: You Can Make a Difference.” Interracial Books for Children Bulletin 12, no. 3 (1981). https://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Literature/Literature-idx?type=article&did=Literature.CIBCBulletinv12n03.i0003&id=Literature.CIBCBulletinv12n03&isize=M&pview=hide.

“Interracial Books for Children Bulletin: Special Double Issue on Preteen and Teenage Romance Series,” 1981. https://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Literature/Literature-idx?type=header&id=Literature.CIBCBulletinv12n0405&isize=M&pview=hide.

Grinnan, Dabney. “At the Back Fence #145.” All About Romance. Accessed May 24, 2022. https://allaboutromance.com/author-interviews/at-the-back-fence-145/.

Moss, Gabrielle. Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ’80s and ’90s Teen Fiction. Quirk Books, 2018.

Source: re: Tracy West https://twitter.com/BGSU_PopCultLib/status/1093949394444009473?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed&ref_url=notion%3A%2F%2Fwww.notion.so%2Fandreamartucci%2FIntro-to-Young-Adult-f46e4a1c012c4d7b983599bcb84564e4

Source: re: Vivian Stephens & Jackie Weger book: https://teachmetonight.blogspot.com/2015/02/thoughts-inspired-by-conference-race.html

Shelf Love:

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Lucy Hargrave shares her research into the history of queer romance. While Lucy dates published narratives of fictional happy endings for queer characters back to 1906, she charts the evolution since then in 5 significant time periods with different political, cultural, and technological climates. Plus, Lucy shares some results from her quantitative research into modern readers and writers of queer romance books.

Shelf Love:

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Guest: Lucy Hargrave

Twitter | Instagram | YouTube

Lucy Hargrave is a third year PhD student at the University of Birmingham researching Queer Romance Novels of the 21st Century. Her research explores the queering of the romance genre through a combination of literary critical and social science methodologies to analyse how queer romances rework heteronormative structures. She also produces content to help future and current PhD students on her YouTube channel, Lucy Hargrave.

Shelf Love:

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Fangirl Jeanne answers the question: Why might people, and women in particular, find serial killers to be romantic figures in dark romance in a hetero patriarchal capitalist, racist, etc. society? We discuss the Darkly, Madly Duology by Trisha Wolfe, a dark romance with 2 serial killer main character antagonists.

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Guest: Fangirl Jeanne

Website | Twitter

Jeanne’s tweet thread on the power fantasy of being the singular focus of a powerful man present in Romantic literature and fan fiction: https://twitter.com/fangirlJeanne/status/1507407313220485122?s=20&t=Esqbm4RcOJtUeqnB58DInw

Shelf Love:

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Discussed:

• Darkly, Madly Duet by Trisha Wolfe
• Born, Darkly & Born, Madly

Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]

Readers weigh in on killers in romance novels (AKA people who un-alive other people) and I challenge myself to see if the distasteful elements in the Darkly, Madly duology (discussed next episode!) showed up in less-egregious ways in texts I did enjoy. Also, more thoughts on power, gender roles, and the desire to conquer a protector.

Responses from Antagonist April social media prompts:

• Books with MCs who kill
• Killer Poll
• Why Bad People Do Bad Things
   

Fangirl Jeanne’s tweet thread on the power fantasy, discussed in this episode

Shelf Love:

Join the Conversation on Discord: https://www.patreon.com/ShelfLove

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Shelf Love:

• NEW! Substack for original writing and stuff | Website | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube
• Email: [email protected]