While not all the works referred to are romance, the research draws on romance scholarship and puts current romantasy into the context of the history of popular romance novels. Here's the abstract:
The article introduces the concept of “consent capital” to analyze how writing and reading romantasy, a leading book genre on contemporary bookish platforms often criticized for its young female communities and “trivial” nature, has become a site for political discourse. Drawing on feminist research on romance since the 1980s, and theories on consent culture and cultural capital, the analysis traces romantasy’s role in the post-digital storytelling of body politics, particularly after 2016. Through a comparative analysis of contemporary romantasy series, exemplified by a case study on Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series and a focus on “alpha male archetypes,” the article argues that notions of consent, bodily autonomy, and trauma have been transformed into a form of cultural capital, which is actively practiced, but also discussed and aesthetically reflected upon on social media platforms. In post-digital storytelling, it informs cultural value debates and commodification strategies on “sides” like BookTok, where romantasy’s fictional renegotiations of consent capital intersect with the current political, legal and cultural debates on “consent” in countries in the “Global North”.
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This idea of romantasy “moving with the times” will be explored in more detail in this article, from an initial look at the reading industry, over a theoretical framework for sociopolitical implications of romance literature to a case study of contemporary romantasy series and the ways in which their ideas are (re)negotiated in post-digital narratives online.
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important with regards to YA literature, many analyzed characters undergo healing through a visual transition from rigid, often militaristic or professional attire to more casual, youthful fashion, accompanied by interests in sports and more adolescent-typical behaviors. The predominantly US-American reading industry of romantasy could add a complex layer here, exemplified by Yarros’s controversially discussed open letter refusing her husband’s sixth deployment (Britzky, 2019). It highlights a tension between patriotic duty and individual autonomy of the “inviolable” body, including the freedom to love and establish personal boundaries underpinned by consent capital. This tension appears central to many contemporary romantasy novels analyzed, suggesting a renegotiation of a national trauma of a generation of young Americans, predominantly men, engaged in protracted foreign conflicts.
While not all the works referred to are romance, the research draws on romance scholarship and puts current romantasy into the context of the history of popular romance novels. Here's the abstract:
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