Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance (RTR) is a book that was published at the University of Pennsylvania, United States, in 1984 and soon after republished as a second edition (1987). RTR combines a text analysis with a reception study and an ethnographic study of mass-produced romance literature. The book revolves around a circle of female romance readers in a small American town and the bookseller who merchandises, recommends, and discusses the literature with the readers. The books themselves are also discussed as texts. Radway conducts narrative analyses and a psychoanalytic interpretation of the texts, uses questionnaires, and interviews readers, producers, and distributors. The book is considered a classic within Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies, and Comparative Literature.
An updated version of Reading the Romance, with a new introduction, was published in 1991.
Since this has been an extremely influential text, it has given rise to many responses/critiques. See, among others:
At the annual meeting of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (April 16-18, 2014, Chicago), scholars of English, cultural studies, fandom, religious studies, and other disciplines gathered to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature.
A chapter in Classics in Media Theory (2024) describes this book as follows:
An updated version of Reading the Romance, with a new introduction, was published in 1991.
Since this has been an extremely influential text, it has given rise to many responses/critiques. See, among others:
and
This is from Eric Selinger's Reading the Romance: A Thirtieth Anniversary Roundtable, Editor’s Introduction
The papers published in that section of issue 4.2 of the Journal of Popular Romance Studies were:
To My Mentor, Jan Radway, With Love by Deborah Chappel Traylor
The Politics of Popular Romance Studies by Lynn S. Neal
Radway Roundtable Remarks by Katherine Larsen
Studying the Romance Reader, Then and Now: Rereading Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance by Jessica Matthews
Love’s Laborers Lost: Radway, Romance Writers, and Recuperating Our Past by Heather Schell
From Reading the Romance to Grappling with Genre by Stephanie Moody
Rattling the Toolkit: Methods for Reading Romance, Gender, and Culture by Katherine Morrissey
We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby: Reflecting Thirty Years after Reading the Romance by Mallory Jagodzinski