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Chick lit is the marketing label attributed to a surge of books
published in the wake of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary
(1996) and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (1997). Branded by
their pink or pastel-coloured book covers, chick-lit novels have
been a highly successful and ubiquitous product of women's popular
culture since the late 1990s. This study traces the evolution of
chick lit not only as a genre of popular fiction, but as a cultural
phenomenon. It complicates the genealogy of the texts by situating
them firmly in the context of age-old debates about female literary
creation, and by highlighting the dynamics of the popular-fiction
market. Offering a convincing dissection of the formula which lies
at the heart of chick lit, as well as in-depth analyses of a number
of chick-lit titles ranging from classic to more recent and edgier
texts, this book yields new insights into a relatively young field
of academic study. Its close readings provide astute assessments of
chick lit's notoriously skewed representational politics,
especially with regard to sexuality and ethnicity, which feed into
current discussions about postfeminism. Moreover, the study makes a
unique contribution to the scholarly debate of chick lit by
including an analysis of the (online) fan communities the genre has
fostered. The Cultural Politics of Chick Lit weaves a sound
methodological network, drawing on reader-response criticism;
feminist, gender, and queer theory; affect studies; and whiteness
studies. This book is an accessible and engaging study for anyone
interested in postfeminism and popular culture.
Chick lit is the marketing label attributed to a surge of books
published in the wake of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary
(1996) and Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City (1997). Branded by
their pink or pastel-coloured book covers, chick-lit novels have
been a highly successful and ubiquitous product of women's popular
culture since the late 1990s. This study traces the evolution of
chick lit not only as a genre of popular fiction, but as a cultural
phenomenon. It complicates the genealogy of the texts by situating
them firmly in the context of age-old debates about female literary
creation, and by highlighting the dynamics of the popular-fiction
market. Offering a convincing dissection of the formula which lies
at the heart of chick lit, as well as in-depth analyses of a number
of chick-lit titles ranging from classic to more recent and edgier
texts, this book yields new insights into a relatively young field
of academic study. Its close readings provide astute assessments of
chick lit's notoriously skewed representational politics,
especially with regard to sexuality and ethnicity, which feed into
current discussions about postfeminism. Moreover, the study makes a
unique contribution to the scholarly debate of chick lit by
including an analysis of the (online) fan communities the genre has
fostered. The Cultural Politics of Chick Lit weaves a sound
methodological network, drawing on reader-response criticism;
feminist, gender, and queer theory; affect studies; and whiteness
studies. This book is an accessible and engaging study for anyone
interested in postfeminism and popular culture.
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