Young adult romance

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2020

Department/School

English Language and Literature

Publication Title

The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Romance Fiction

Abstract

Scholarship on young adult romance is intertwined with the complexities and contradictions that form the field of young adult literature, including the problem of defining the literature, the history of the field, and the differing methodologies and agendas of the three main disciplines that study young adult literature. The scholarship itself has been dominated by three periods: the 1940s through 1960s, which focused on the use of first love narratives within “junior novels” as tools for girls’ socialization and “steppingstones” to mature texts; the 1980s, which critiqued teen romance series lines such as Scholastic’s Wildfire or Random House’s Sweet Valley High for damaging portrayals of patriarchal power while simultaneously starting to investigate intersectional identities; and the 2000s onward, which significantly broadened previous scholarship by examining histories of teen romance; the rise of supernatural YA romance such as Twilight; queer YA romance; and non-traditional forms of YA romance (including fan fiction, graphic novels, and manga). All three periods reflect a complicated set of conventions and assumptions that reveal changing ideologies concerning our collective notion of “teenagers,” and what constitutes “appropriate” romance reading material for them.

Comments

A. K. Allen is a faculty member in EMU's Department of English Language and Literature.

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