FACULTY OF ARTS AND EDUCATION MASTER’S THESIS Programme of study: Spring semester, 2016 Master in Literacy Studies Open Author: Karen Schmidt ………………………………………… (Author’s signature) Supervisor: Dr. Mildrid H.A. Bjerke Thesis title: Chick or Lit: An Investigation of the Chick Lit Genre in Light of Traditional Standards of Literary Value Keywords: No. of pages: 115 Literary value + appendices/other:9 Western Canon Popular fiction Chick Lit Stavanger, 11th May 2016 Postfeminism Abstract The present master’s thesis explores the chick lit genre in light of traditional standards of literary value. The thesis investigates how literary value and quality has been defined through the last couple of centuries, as well as how popular fiction, and chick lit in particular, is evaluated in terms of literary value and quality. The thesis seeks to understand how the popular embrace of genre fiction, like chick lit, relates to the typical critical rejection of such writing. Ultimately, the motivation behind the present thesis is to reach an understanding of why it is necessary to discriminate between good and bad writing, and whether it is possible to discuss literary value and quality without such a binary mode of thinking. The thesis’s first body chapter explores how literary value and quality has been defined in the past. Central works are Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy (1882[1869]) and ‘The Study of Poetry’ (1880), Q.D. Leavis’s Fiction and the Reading Public (1932), F.R. Leavis’s The Great Tradition (1960[1948]) and Culture and Environment (1977[1933]) and Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory (2008[1983]). The chapter aims to show on how these critics have defined literary value and quality, and how they have considered the position of popular fiction. In the second body chapter, Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon (1995) and Janice Radway’s A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste and Middle- Class Desire (1997) are essential. The chapter explores how Bloom and Radway are both engaged with the issue of reading advice addressed to the general reading public. The discussion in this chapter, and Radway’s study on the Book-of-the-Month Club in particular, demonstrates the relevance of pleasure reading for discussing literary value. In the third and final body chapter of the thesis, the chick lit genre is explored as an example of contemporary popular fiction. Important works are Stephanie Harzewski’s Chick Lit and Postfeminism (2008), Diane Negra’s What a Girl Wants? (2009) and Rocio Montoro’s Chick Lit: The Stylistics of Cappuccino Fiction (2012), as well as Chick Lit: The New Woman’s Fiction (2006) edited by Suzanne Ferriss and Mallory Young, and the two short story collections This is Not Chick Lit (2006) and This is Chick-Lit (2006) edited by Elizabeth Merrick and Lauren Baratz-Logsted respectively. The chapter explores the following research question: is chick lit valuable reading material, and how do we decide? This thesis shows that the difference between being entertained and being challenged is fundamental to what separates popular fiction from serious literature. With reference to both historical and contemporary accounts of literary value, the ability to challenge readers is 1 identified as the nature of literature. In light of traditional standards of literary value, chick lit does not qualify as literature, but is rather juxtaposed to literature. The thesis shows that the issue of defining literary value and quality is a complex matter, and that an objective, universal perspective on literary value is problematized by those who stress the mutability and diversity of literary evaluations. However, the thesis’s investigation of chick lit demonstrates how popular fiction fails to challenge readers, and rather works to perpetuate habitual thinking. Thus, the thesis calls attention to the continued importance of discriminating between good and bad writing. The thesis shows that a binary mode of thinking, although arguably both elitist and condescending, is necessary in order to demonstrate why the difference between genre fiction and literature, or between chick and lit in particular, matters. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Brita Strand Rangnes for her enthusiasm in literature lectures, which made me discover my own passion for the sociological field of literary studies. I am grateful also to Jena Habegger-Conti for her encouragement and support during my first year of working on this thesis, and to Heidi Silje Moen for making me write those difficult first words. The support and guidance of my supervisor Dr. Mildrid H.A. Bjerke has been invaluable, and I am very grateful for all her help and encouragement. I also wish to thank all of my colleagues at Ryfylkebiblioteket Strand for their flexibility and support. Finally, I wish to thank my whole family for their continuous encouragement and support. I am particularly grateful to my mother for letting me turn her apartment into an office and for being a committed ‘mormor’ to my girls. Thank you Ylva and Anna for your unconditional love, and thank you Henning for all your support and patience. I could not have done it without you. 3 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………...1 Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………….....3 Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………4 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………….5 1.1 The Present Study and its Aims…………………………………………..………..5 1.2 Background and Definition of Terms……………………………………….……..7 1.3 Outline of Chapters: Material and Methodology………………………………....14 2. Traditional Standards of Literary Value…………………………………………………...19 2.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….19 2.2 Matthew Arnold: Touchstones and Disinterested Criticism……………………...19 2.3 The Leavisites: The Educated Minority and their Cultivation of the Masses…….29 2.4 Terry Eagleton: Questioning Universality and Authority………………………...41 2.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….......47 3. “Says who?” — Literary Evaluation, Value and Authority………………………………..48 3.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….48 3.2 What to Read: Harold Bloom and the Western Canon…………………………...50 3.3 The Value of an Evaluation: Barbara Herrnstein Smith……………………….....56 3.4 Commercial Forces and the Process of Canonization………………………….....61 3.5 What to Read: The Book-of-the-Month Club…………………………………….67 3.6 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...75 4. The Value of Chick Lit…………………………………………………………………….77 4.1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………….77 4.2 Women and the Romance Novel……………………………………………….....80 4.3 Feminism and Postfeminism……………………………………………………...85 4.4 Women and the Chick Lit Novel………………………………………………....88 4.5 Women Writers: Chick Lit — A Limiting or Liberating Force?............................96 4.6 Women Readers: Chick or Lit?.............................................................................108 4.7 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….114 5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………..115 6. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………...120 4 1. Introduction 1.1 The Present Study and its Aims This thesis intends to take a closer look at popular fiction in a discussion of literary value. My starting point has been: what is it that distinguishes Literature, with a capital L, from popular fiction? The thesis will explore this question first from a historical perspective, then through a discussion on the chick lit genre as an example of contemporary popular women’s fiction. In other words, the thesis will explore the chick lit genre in light of traditional standards of literary value, and thus focus particularly on the position of women’s writing and reading. At the time of writing, women from all over the world are completely engrossed in the books about Anastasia Steel and her adventures with the ‘drop dead gorgeous’ Christian Grey. Since the first book in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy was published in 2012, more than a hundred million copies of the books by E. L. James have been sold worldwide. The books were also on the New York Times bestseller list for over a hundred weeks. At the same time, however, most critical reviews of E. L James’ books were merciless in their assessment of the trilogy as lacking literary value, as this quote from Jessica Reaves’ review in the Chicago Tribune demonstrates: “Whatever the cause of the book's popularity, one thing seems certain: It has nothing to do with the book itself”. (Reaves 2012) It is interesting how books that are not well received by literary critics still often become major bestsellers, like the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon illustrates. In the case of Fifty Shades of Grey it is obvious that there is a gap between the critical and the popular opinion of the books. We can assume that the criteria by which literary critics judge E. L. James’s trilogy differ from those of the eager readers of the books. The commercial success that E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey has seen, in spite of poor reviews, shows how the question of how to evaluate and value literature is as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago, when Matthew Arnold set out to articulate the “high standards” of classic poets in his Study of Poetry (Arnold 1880,3). The distinction between genre fiction and literary fiction, or lowbrow and highbrow literature, will be essential for this thesis’s discussion. In an attempt to understand the contemporary hierarchical perspective on fiction as low- mid- or highbrow, this thesis will start by looking at literary criticism from the late 19th and 20th century. How has literary quality and value been considered by literary critics and theorists through the last couple of centuries? When looking back on previous discussions of literary value, works by Matthew 5 Arnold, F.R Leavis, Q.D. Leavis and Terry Eagleton will be central. These critics have been chosen because they are all important and influential critics, and their works can offer us an understanding of how literary quality and value has been viewed and discussed over the last hundred years. Furthermore, the thesis will go on to consider how works by Harold Bloom and his views on literary value function in relation to Janice Radway’s research on middle brow fiction and readers.