[LV - I decided to include this article, although I'm not sure if all the texts discussed are strictly speaking romance novels, because there is use of romance scholarship. Note that although there are issues with the Internet Archive's page, the text of the article should be visible after scrolling down.]
Here's the abstract:
Romantasy – a hybrid genre of romance and fantasy – is well known for its explicit ‘spicy’ content. Like romance fiction, female desire and pleasure are central to the narrative. Drawing on textual analysis from three popular romantasy series, this article examines the genre’s potential to foster cultural cliteracy: or the recognition and understanding of the clitoris as a central site of sexual pleasure. It explores how depictions of clitoral stimulation, female sexual response and orgasm function as a form of public pedagogy on female sexual embodiment. Through detailed sensory description, romantasy offers rich narratives of female pleasure that contrast the often disembodied and risk-focused approaches that pervade school-based sexuality education. While the genre is not without its limitations, it is argued that romantasy provides readers imaginative, safe spaces to engage with the embodied, erotic and emotional dimensions of sex, gender and relationships. In doing so, it offers valuable counternarratives to patriarchal and phallocentric discourses that continue to constrain how female sexuality is understood and expressed.
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This article explores romantasy’s cliterate potential through an analysis of female protagonists in several popular series: Rebecca Yarros’s The Empyrean (2023–2025), A.K. Mulford’s The Rogue Crown (2022), the third instalment in The Five Crowns of Okrith, and Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015–2021).
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Fusing the erotic conventions of romance with the speculative world-building of fantasy, romantasy invites readers into imaginative spaces where dominant sexual narratives are both unsettled and reproduced. Unlike the sexual awakening storylines frequently seen in YA, romantasy heroines often have sexual histories, including previous relationships or casual sexual encounters. As a result, virginity is less frequently fetishised or mobilised as a plot device to produce tension. Like contemporary romance fiction, female protagonists are commonly depicted as capable of naming, initiating and enjoying their own sexual wants.
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From a sexuality education perspective, these vivid depictions offer a fictional, yet materially rich form of knowledge that contrasts the disembodied treatment of sexuality that often pervades school-based sexuality education, particularly for young women.
[LV - I decided to include this article, although I'm not sure if all the texts discussed are strictly speaking romance novels, because there is use of romance scholarship. Note that although there are issues with the Internet Archive's page, the text of the article should be visible after scrolling down.]
Here's the abstract:
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