Quote:
Originally Posted by FizzyWater
As a previous bookseller, you should know there's varying levels of sensuality in all romances - even in historicals. Have you looked through a Stephanie Laurens historical lately?
And as you say, "porn" means different things to different people. It can be frustrating on this forum, given the high number of male techies, to put up with the fairly constant sneering about romance novels being "soft porn". If you don't like romance, don't read it.
I don't post disparaging comments on every recommendation for yet-another-suspense-novel where women are routinely raped and murdered in inventive and heinous ways.
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All Romances are not soft porn. Some are, however. There are degrees to everything that we read. One can find soft porn in Science Fiction; in fact, anywhere one cares to look one can find elements of soft porn. Now, how we react to what we read is at the heart of one of the critical theories I embrace, as explained below:
I recognize that some readers may see things differently. Critically, I'm in the camp of Reader-Response criticism, made popular (mainly) by
Wolgang Iser and
Stanley Fish. This is in total opposition (for example) to New Criticism, which sees the work in question as having the main meaning derived from the text. In this scenario, the Meaning is always ever-present, like a Found Object.
Reader-Response criticism, on the other hand, recognizes that meaning and understanding come from the individual and that the Text does not possess a fixed meaning.
What I find particularly interesting is how different readers react to certain Texts. Some readers desire to "possess" the Text and become very protective of their Treasure. For these readers, the Text reinforces or embraces their ideals of what is appropriate or inappropriate in Literature.
I see reading as a transactional experience (what I was attempting to explain in the above paragraph), with the Reader and the Text interacting in a kind of symbiotic dance, one that appears to reinforce one's belief system. In this interpretive scenario, the Text (interestingly enough), becomes a kind of 'production'; and by that, I mean that the Text undergoes interpretive changes based upon the interpreter, vis-a-vis cultural background, socio-economic upbringing, etc.
Don