Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture

Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Location
Chicago
Publication year
1976
Comment

Despite what you might assume from the title, there isn't actually a great deal about romance in this book. Cawelti himself has written that

I can myself look back somewhat shamefacedly to the mid-1970s when I called a book Adventure, Mystery and Romance, but had almost nothing about romance in it. ("Masculine Myths" 123)

However, it was nonetheless notable that it was included for study along with other genres:

I consider these popular formulas to be of more complex artistic and cultural interest than most previous commentators have indicated. To substantiate this general thesis, I have chosen to deal rather intensively with a few major formulas - various forms of detective and crime stories, the western, and the best-selling social melodrama. I have not attempted to present an overall account of popular formulas or genres - the reader will quickly note such obvious omissions as all types of comedy and romance, the horror story, science-fiction, and many other important areas of popular narrative and drama. [...] Instead, the organizing principle of this book is theoretical: I have tried to define the major analytical problems that confront us when we seek to inquire more fully into the nature and significance of formulaic literature [...]. Thus, I hope the book will combine some of the advantages of generality and particularity. It develops a general methodology that can, I believe, be profitably applied to popular formulas other than those treated in this book. (2)

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Cawelti, John G. (1994) "Masculine Myths and Feminist Revisions: Some Thoughts on the Future of Popular Genres" in Eye on the Future: Popular Culture Scholarship into the Twenty-first Century in Honor of Ray B. Browne. Ed. Marilyn F. Motz, John G. Nachbar, Michael T. Marsden and Ronald J. Ambrosetti. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. 121-132.

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