People: Joanne Charbonneau

TRUE ROMANCE

Romance novels from the likes of Harlequin, Silhouette and Temptation account for half of all trade paperbacks sold, selling $800 million a year. Some in academia pooh-pooh the genre as trash, but Joanne Charbonneau (Rice), Ph.D. '81, a University of Montana professor who specializes in the evolution of romantic literature, demurs. 'Every kind of women--including professionals--read them,' says Charbonneau, who has written many scholarly articles on the subject. 'Romance novels survive because they satisfy something basic in the Western psyche--the need for connection with another.'

Although modern heroines live 'happily ever after,' she notes, medieval narratives often ended in tragedy. 'Look at Erec and Enide, or Tristan and Isolde, where they separate and he eventually dies,' she says. 'Guinevere (of the Arthurian Legend) ends up in the nunnery--and that's certainly not a happy ending. Medieval romances tend to show the collapse of the social system when public good is sacrificed for private desire.'

A native of Massachusetts, Joanne notes that before medieval romantic literature, 'your great epics, like the Iliad, the Aeneid, and so on, were all about men, warfare and the heroic ideal.' Then, writers like Chretien de Troyes of France in the 12th century, emerged--'suddenly, the desire between the sexes is explored, and emotion--especially the ennobling power of love--is analyzed.'

Joanne touts former MSU professors like Jack Yunck, Dick Sullivan, Tess Tavormina and John Alford. 'Alford once asked me to write an annotated bibliography of Middle English romances,' she chuckles. 'It took me three years!' She is currently writing a book on women's lives in modern fiction, tentatively titled No More Virgins, No More Whores. 'What's fascinating,' she explains, 'is that we no longer have the Eva-Ave dichotomy. A whole new range of women is emerging.'