The article is in French but there is a version of the abstract in English:
“They’re all about love and they are read by women (what’s more, women of a lower class), so they can only be silly,” states Bruno Péquignot, about romance novels, in La relation amoureuse. Analyse sociologique du roman sentimental moderne. The researcher’s ironic comments invite an interrogation of the relationships between literature and ideology and a revision of the social status attributed to feminine literature. Criticized for their relentless stereotypical motifs, their predictability, and their adherence to novelistic conventions, adolescent romance novels, following the example of romance novels for women, are not exempt from the remarks made with regard to feminine literature.
The example of the “Coeur-à-coeur” collection of adolescent romance novels published by Éditions Héritage from 1982 to 1998 illustrates well that, despite mass production, the durability of a collection is never assured. A study of ten Coeur-à-coeur novels enables us to see ways in which the collection builds networks of gendered meaning and offers a specific vision of femininity. By focussing on the representation of the adolescent, we will see how these novels suggest or even impose a cultural definition of young girls and shatter, through the reflexive process that they initiate, the illusion of referentiality, to borrow a term from Daniel Couégnas. It is not surprising then that the popularity of the collection declined, its female adolescent readers seeking dreams and evasions in the novels rather than the transposition of their concerns.
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L’exemple de « Coeur-à-coeur », collection de romans d’amour destinés aux adolescentes, parue aux Éditions Héritage de 1982 à 1998 et comptant 97 titres de 46 auteurs, donne pourtant à voir qu’en dépit d’une production de masse, bon marché et largement diffusée, la pérennité d’une collection n’est jamais assurée. En effet, les romans de cette collection sont ignorés aujourd’hui de l’institution littéraire et d’un large public et reposent sans doute sur quelques tablettes de librairies d’occasion.
Une étude de dix romans « Coeur-à-coeur », parus entre 1982 et 1990 et retenus parmi les 97 titres puisque mis en marché au Québec au cours de la période de publication la plus fructueuse de la collection, permettra de voir en quoi on y trouve une vision spécifique de la féminité construite sur des réseaux de significations sexuées.
The article is in French but there is a version of the abstract in English:
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