The concept of paratextuality in literary genre Chick-lit

This text is an analysis of the concept of paratext based on contemporary literature. In addition to the theoretical part concentrating on the idea of Gérard Genette, some information on the Chick-Lit genre appeared in the article. Among other things, genre characteristics, historical backgrounds and biographical notes of the authors of the analysed novels were described. Genette's theory clearly shows that an inseparable part of the book as a final product is its cover and what the reader finds on it. These are, among others, the title, abstract, of significance is also the colouring or even the location of the author's name. All these elements have been described in detail and analysed according Gérard Genette's concepts.

Speaking with the Dead: The Sick Chick and the Psychic Crypt in Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

This paper explores Gail Honeyman’s 2017 novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine from the perspective of Abraham and Torok’s concept of the psychic crypt. On one level the protagonist Eleanor, a thirty-year-old urban single woman searching for love, resembles a chick-lit heroine; however, Eleanor is deeply lonely, apparently autistic, suicidal and a survivor of childhood abuse and trauma. The paper argues that Eleanor’s difficulties can be understood as the consequences of encryptment which, in Abraham and Torok’s terms, is a disease of mourning where the dead loved one is incorporated rather than introjected into the psyche.

A Different Shade of Pink: Literary Thresholds and Cultural Intersections in Italian Chick Lit

<p>This thesis investigates the Italian production of chick lit, a particular segment of contemporary women’s popular fiction developed in the mid 1990s in Anglophone countries. A worldwide phenomenon born out of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) and the HBO TV show Sex and the City (1998), chick lit novels portray the professional, emotional and sentimental anxieties of white, middle-class, heterosexual and financially independent women in a witty and humorous tone. The arrival of chick lit and its successful translation into Italian in the late 1990s has prompted many local writers to engage with the genre, but the growing body of chick lit written in Italian and its place in the cultural and literary landscape have yet to be assessed. This thesis explores recurring themes, narrative strategies and stylistic features deployed in Italian chick lit novels not only against their Anglo-American models, but also in relation to Western popular media culture and the Italian tradition of romanzo rosa, its cultures and practices as well as its legacy. It shows the presence of distinct intertextual patterns in dealing with key generic features, such as the identification with the female protagonist and her journey toward self-empowerment, the relationship with consumerism and popular media culture, and the humorous style. This thesis also assesses the nature of chick lit as both a literary genre and a sociocultural phenomenon across countries and languages through theoretical perspectives of cultural studies and feminist theories on women’s popular culture and Western popular postfeminism.</p>

A Different Shade of Pink: Literary Thresholds and Cultural Intersections in Italian Chick Lit

<p>This thesis investigates the Italian production of chick lit, a particular segment of contemporary women’s popular fiction developed in the mid 1990s in Anglophone countries. A worldwide phenomenon born out of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) and the HBO TV show Sex and the City (1998), chick lit novels portray the professional, emotional and sentimental anxieties of white, middle-class, heterosexual and financially independent women in a witty and humorous tone. The arrival of chick lit and its successful translation into Italian in the late 1990s has prompted many local writers to engage with the genre, but the growing body of chick lit written in Italian and its place in the cultural and literary landscape have yet to be assessed. This thesis explores recurring themes, narrative strategies and stylistic features deployed in Italian chick lit novels not only against their Anglo-American models, but also in relation to Western popular media culture and the Italian tradition of romanzo rosa, its cultures and practices as well as its legacy. It shows the presence of distinct intertextual patterns in dealing with key generic features, such as the identification with the female protagonist and her journey toward self-empowerment, the relationship with consumerism and popular media culture, and the humorous style. This thesis also assesses the nature of chick lit as both a literary genre and a sociocultural phenomenon across countries and languages through theoretical perspectives of cultural studies and feminist theories on women’s popular culture and Western popular postfeminism.</p>

Chick Lit in India: A Step Towards Power Feminism

Chick lit which is generally described as the modern-day fairy tale focuses upon the lives of young urban educated working women in search of a life partner. These books labelled as popular literature were summarily dismissed by the critics as frivolous and insignificant. A deeper study focusing upon transformed symbols and motifs with respect to the lives of women, offers an important insight into how 21st-century feminism is moving beyond a ‘victim feminism’ mindset to that of ‘power feminism’. This study is a semiotic study of Indian chick lit with a special focus upon four novels: Piece of Cake (2004) by Swati Kaushal, Girl Alone (2005) by Rupa Gulab, Almost Single (2009) by Advaita Kala and Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas (2011) by Madhuri Banerjee.

Recovering contemporary genre histories – the development of chick lit as seen through the internet archive’s wayback machine and wikipedia’s history page

In the perception of literary scholars, the investigation of genre histories is still closely linked to ‘offline’ archival work. However, the Internet has been publicly accessible since 1991, and over the last thirty years, numerous new literary genres have emerged. They have often been proclaimed, defined, spread, marketed, criticized, and even pronounced dead online. By now, a great deal of this digital material is said to have disappeared. What many scholars do not consider, however, is that parts of the web are archived, for example by the Internet Archive and Wikipedia, which make their archives publicly available via the Wayback Machine and the history page respectively. This makes it possible to track early online definitions of contemporary genres and their development. In this paper, I will use the chick lit genre, which emerged in the second half of the 1990s, as a case study to show the benefits of including web archives in the reconstruction of contemporary genre histories. An analysis of both the first extensive and long-running fan websites, which are now offline but well-documented in the Internet Archive, and the history page of the Wikipedia article on chick lit will challenge some of the narratives that have long dominated chick lit research.

A “nova” escrita contemporânea de/para mulheres:

Esse trabalho se interessa em investigar e identificar as lógicas de sensibilidades e identificações que, em certa medida, explicam o sucesso dos romances “chick-lit/soft porn”, que invadiram o mercado editorial brasileiro a partir do final do século XX até os dias atuais. Essa literatura, feita por mulheres e voltada para o público-alvo de leitoras, inundam as prateleiras físicas/virtuais das livrarias com histórias repletas de relacionamentos sexuais e amorosos, muitas vezes descritos em profusos detalhes cênicos. Essa pesquisa usa a categoria mercantil best-seller para pensar no critério de vendagens acima das médias de leitura regulares da sociedade. O foco de análise centrou-se na ideia de que tal literatura best-seller “chick-lit/soft porn” é produtora e reprodutora de alguns discursos sobre as relações dos poderes entre os gêneros algumas formas de vivências de sexualidades possíveis. Dessa maneira, as representações textuais e simbólicas naturalizadas dessa literatura incorporam, nos dias atuais, uma fonte autorizada de consumo de narrativas sobre erotismo, prazer e amor para as mulheres.

Cinderella Syndrome of Working Women in Cyber Literature

Cyber literature has been academically recognized in literary studies through multiple research studies. Cyber literature is manifested in various cyberspace, both maintained individually and professionally. Writing platforms on the internet, such as Wattpad, have been widely used. They provide space for writers and engage readers to create online writing communities. One of the most popular genres found in cyber literature is romance chick-lit, in which most main characters are working women. Although most protagonists are working women who are financially independent, they still search for men who have higher positions, social levels, and financial stability. They wish that such men will find and save them, referred to by Colette Dowling as Cinderella complex. The study investigates the Cinderella complex's indications on female protagonists in two Wattpad chick lit works: 1) Furious Boss & Naughty Secretary, and 2) Ex-lovers but Married. The indications of Cinderella Complex were shown through 1) the wish to be saved, 2) the girl-child lives on, 3) the achievement gap, 4) the intimations of helplessness, and 5) the blind devotion.Keywords: Cinderella complex; cyber literature, WattpadAbstrak. Sastra cyber sudah diperhitungkan sebagai bagian dari studi sastra secara akademik melalui berbagai penelitian yang sudah dilakukan. Sastra cyber terwujud di dalam berbagai ruang cyber, baik itu dijalankan secara individual maupun profesional. Platform menulis pada internet seperti Wattpad sudah marak digunakan sebagai tempat berkarya bagi penulis serta menarik perhatian pembaca untuk menciptkana suatu komunitas menulis secara online. Salah satu genre populer pada sastra cyber adalah chicklit romantis yang mana karakter utamanya adalah wanita pekerja. Meskipun protagonis wanita merupakan wanita pekerja yang independen secara finansial, mereka masih mengharapkan pasangan yang berada di posisi, tingkat sosial dan kestabilan finansial yang lebih besar dari mereka. Studi ini bertujuan untuk mencari indikasi adanya Cinderella complex pada karakter protagonis perempuan melalui dua karya chicklit di Wattpad, yaitu: 1) Furious Boss & Naughty Secretary, dan 2) Mantan Tapi Menikah. Indikasi Cinderella complex yang ditemukan adalah 1) keinginan untuk diselamatkan, 2) gadis-kecil yang hidup di dalam diri, 3) kesenjangan prestasi, 4) tanda ketidakmampuan, dan 5) kepatuhan yang buta.Kata kunci: Cinderella complex; sastra cyber, Wattpad