See in particular Chapter 4, on "Reading Romantic Fiction." This discusses existing academic work about popular romance. Here's the abstract for that chapter:
Romantic fiction is the genre that tends to be most commonly associated with women. This chapter shows that, for feminists, romantic fiction was politically dangerous, a mechanism through which patriarchal culture was reproduced: women were fed fantasies of true love, fantasies which most women were seen to unquestioningly accept. Janice Radway's Reading the Romance demonstrates that in order to understand the meaning and significance of romance, it is necessary to analyse the complex relations between publishing industries, romance texts and romance readers. Approaches to romantic fiction have developed differently to approaches to the woman's film within film studies. The chapter discusses a range of ideas about the characteristics of romantic fiction and romance readers. It explores why romantic fiction has a particular appeal for women, while also considering the particular pleasures of the romance and the often uneasy relationship between feminism, romances and their reader.
See in particular Chapter 4, on "Reading Romantic Fiction." This discusses existing academic work about popular romance. Here's the abstract for that chapter: