V.V. (1) Picaresque novel

[jporter]

> From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
> 
> The housebound woman living vicariously through pulp romances is a
> gratuitous and patronising (male) stereotype which doesn't have much
> significance for historical actuality in any era, I would imagine, Emma
> Bovary notwithstanding.
> 

I don't know whether the people who read *pulp romances* are housebound,
whether they are primarily living vicariously through them, or whether they
are the victims of gratuitous and patronizing male stereotyping- or if they
care. I do know that according to one survey 40 million people in America
read at least one of this genre in the past year, and, apparently 9% of
those readers were men.

Obviously the genre is flourishing. What are its sources? Is it unrelated to
the picaresque, an offshoot, or are they both the descendants of some common
ancestral prototype, less secular perhaps?

jody