Men reading fiction: A study of the relationship between reader, (con)text, consumption and gender identity.

The researcher brought together a reading group of men and Chapter Eight:

analyses the group's discursive responses to four culturally feminised genres of fiction. The four books chosen were: A Passionate Revenge (2004) by Sara Wood (a Mills and Boon novel) as an example of contemporary popular romance fiction, Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen as a representation of some 'classic' female authored fiction, Bridget Jones's Diary (1996) was the third book, selected for its status as the originary "chick lit"novel and the epitome of this genre, and finally a feminist novel - The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. [...]

An interesting variant of textual poaching which doesn't conform to this notion of the isolated reader making meanings to"serve only their own interests" (Jenkins 1992: 45) was evident during the reading of the Mills and Boon popular romance novel in which the group members colluded to execute a generic shift from romance to pornography and thus 'poached' from the text to serve a group interest. (175)

Here's the abstract for the whole thesis:

This thesis is a qualitative study of men's talk about fiction reading. Based on 38 interviews with male readers and 13 book group sessions with four male participants it draws upon the theories of Bourdieu (1986) and de Certeau (1988) to analyse how men's consumption practices may in part be constitutive of articulations of gendered identity. My analysis of the qualitative data begins with a focus on the interviews, looking at how Bourdieu's conceptual apparatus can be extended to look at the power of the media as a form of 'meta-capital' (Couldry 2003) and gender as a form of symbolic power. The interview analysis identifies a link between gender and genre, with masculinity articulated by negation of culturally feminised texts. Moving towards a more specific analysis of the articulation of the self as gendered, I then consider how the book group participants talk about a series of texts. Firstly focusing on culturally masculinised genres (horror, techno-thriller, science fiction and militaristic action/adventure) the group discussions measured the value of a text by how 'realistic' it was. Subsequently the book group participants were asked to make their own selections to focus on the 'symbolic work' (Willis 2000) of consumption. Each of the books chosen contained elements of comedy pointing to the importance of this genre to performances of masculinity. The readers also revoked their previously established valuation of 'realism' in favour of proximity to the text. Finally, the analysis turns to culturally feminised genres (modern romance, chick lit, feminist fiction, and a 'classic' romantic comedy) where discussions once more emphasised readers' constructions of self in opposition to femininity.