Sаmаrkаnd stаtе institutе оf fоrеign lаnguаgеs fоrеign lаnguаgе аnd litеrаturе

The Romance Writers of America

A romance novel or romantic novel is a type of genre fiction novel which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." There are many subgenres of the romance novel, including fantasy, gothic, contemporary, historical romance, paranormal fiction, and science fiction. Although women are the main readers of romance novels a growing number of men enjoy them as well. The Romance Writers of America cite 16% of men read romance novels. "Many people today don’t realize that romance is more than a love story. Romance can be a complex plotline with a setting from the past in a remote, faraway place. Instead of focusing on a love story, it idealizes values and principles that seem lost in today’s world of technology and instant gratification. However, romance may also be a typical, romantic, love story that makes people sigh with wishful thinking." "Romance is a natural human emotion. Sad love songs and poems when one is recovering from a broken heart can help express unspoken feelings. Happy romantic movies and plays help people feel optimistic that someday they will also find true love. However, there is some criticism that many modern romantic stories make people develop unrealistic views about real relationships, as they expect love to be like it is in the movies."
The term romance is also applied to literary fiction defined by Walter Scott as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvelous and uncommon incidents." Related to this type of romance novel are works that, "involves a mysterious, adventurous, or spiritual story line where the focus is on a quest that involves bravery and strong values, not always a love interest".
A thriving genre of works conventionally referred to as "romance novels" existed in ancient Greece. Other precursors can be found in the literary fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Samuel Richardson's sentimental novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) and the novels of Jane Austen. Austen inspired Georgette Heyer, the British author of historical romance set around the time Austen lived, as well as detective fiction. Heyer's first romance novel, The Black Moth (1921), was set in 1751.
The British company Mills & Boon began releasing romance novels for women in the 1930s. Their books were sold in North America by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd,^[7] which began direct marketing to readers and allowing mass-market merchandisers to carry the books.
An early American example of a mass-market romance was Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Flame and the Flower (1972), published by Avon Books. This was the first single-title romance novel to be published as an original paperback in the US, though in the UK the romance genre was long established through the works of Georgette Heyer, and from the 1950s Catherine Cookson, as well as others.^{[citation needed]} Nancy Coffey was the senior editor who negotiated a multi-book deal with Woodiwiss. The genre boomed in the 1980s, with the addition of many different categories of romance and an increased number of single-title romances, but popular authors started pushing the boundaries of both the genre and plot, as well as creating more contemporary characters.
In the US, modern romance genre fiction was born in 1972, with Avon's publication of Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower, which was the first of the modern "bodice ripper" romance novels to follow "the principals into the bedroom." Aside from its content, the book was revolutionary in that it was one of the first single-title romance novels to be published as an original paperback, rather than being first published in hardcover, and, like the category romances, was distributed in drug stores and other mass-market merchandising outlets. The novel went on to sell 2.35 million copies. Avon followed its release with the 1974 publication of Woodiwiss's second novel, The Wolf and the Dove and two more sexually graphic novels by newcomer Rosemary Rogers, Sweet Savage Love and Dark Fires. The latter sold two million copies in its first three months of release. By 1975, Publishers Weekly had reported that the "Avon originals" had sold a combined 8 million copies. The following year over 150 historical romance novels, many of them paperback originals, were published, selling over 40 million copies.
The success of these novels prompted a new style of writing romance, concentrating primarily on historical fiction tracking the monogamous relationship between a helpless heroine and the hero who rescued her, even if he had been the one to place her in danger. The covers of these novels tended to feature scantily clad women being grabbed by the hero, and caused the novels to be referred to as bodice rippers. A Wall St. Journal article in 1980 referred to these bodice rippers as "publishing's answer to the Big Mac: They are juicy, cheap, predictable, and devoured in stupefying quantities by legions of loyal fans." The term bodice ripper is now considered offensive to many in the romance industry.
In this new style of historical romance, heroines were independent and strong-willed and were often paired with heroes who evolved into caring and compassionate men who truly admired the women they loved. This was in contrast to the contemporary romances published during this time, which were often characterized by weak females who fell in love with overbearing alpha males. Although these heroines had active roles in the plot, they were "passive in relationships with the heroes." Across the genre, heroines during this time were usually aged 16–21, with the heroes slightly older, usually around 30. The women were virgins, while the men were not, and both members of the couple were described as beautiful.
The genre continued to expand in the mid-to-late 1980s, as publishers realized that the more popular authors were often those who stretched the boundaries of the genre. A 1984 novel by LaVyrle Spencer featured an overweight, middle-aged hero who had to make drastic changes to his lifestyle to win the heroine, while a 1987 Dailey novel involved an ugly hero and a heroine who was searching for her birth mother.^[60] Jayne Ann Krentz's 1986 novel Sweet Starfire became the first futuristic romance, combining elements of traditional romance novels and science fiction.^[61] The relationships had also modernized: by the 1990s, it was rare to see a book that featured a man raping his future wife. In the mid-to-late 1980s, contemporary romances began to feature women in more male-dominated jobs, such as offshore oil rigs and the space program. The age range of heroines also began to expand, so that books began to feature women who had already reached 30 and even 40. Heroes also changed, with some authors veering towards a more sensitive man. Despite the broadening of some aspects of the plot, other taboos remained, and publishers discouraged authors from writing about controversial subjects such as terrorism, warfare, and masculine sports. Romance novels began to contain more humor beginning in the 1990s, as Julie Garwood began introducing a great deal of humor into her historical romances.
The romance novel began to expand in other ways as well. In 1989, author Jude Deveraux became the first romance author to transition from writing original mass market paperbacks to being published in hardcover. Her novel, A Knight in Shining Armor, "became a natural bestseller." Several authors found success writing single-title romances set in contemporary times, and publishing houses began to encourage the growth in the genre. Because the novels were set in modern times, they could include more of the elements that modern women could relate to, and soon began to touch on themes such as single parenthood, adoption, and abuse.
The 21st century brought additional changes to the genre that included diversifying main characters and plots to incorporate identities that had not previously been represented.
Scholars of romance novel history have observed that characters with disabilities have been largely underrepresented in mainstream media, including romance novels. By the early 2000s, though, more books in the romance genre featured heroes and heroines with physical and mental impairments.^[66] Mary Balogh's Simply Love, published in 2006, features a hero with facial scarring and nerve damage who overcomes fears of rejection due to his physical appearance to enter a romantic relationship and family unit by the end of the novel. This was a substantial shift from past narratives where disabled characters were "de-eroticized" and not given storylines that included sex or romantic love.
Additionally, characters with autism have gained more representation in the romance genre since the turn of the century. The year 2010 saw Christine Feehan's novel, Water Bound, featuring a heroine with autism as a significant plot point including a detailed and compassionate portrayal of living and coping with autism. Helen Hoang's 2018 novel The Kiss Quotient, for example, focuses on the heroine's Asperger's syndrome. However, it is still rare to find romance novels in which there are characters with cognitive disabilities, and they are most likely to be included as secondary characters.
Since the 1980s, many plot lines that were once thought to be taboo by the romance publishing industry have become much more accepted into the mainstream of romance fiction. For example, in the 20th century it was rare to find a book with a hero who was in the military or professional sports.^[68] In the 21st century, however, such characters are relatively common and even have their own sub-genres within the romance category.
By 2000, the covers had begun to evolve from featuring a scantily clad couple to showing a view of the landscape featured in the novel.
In the earliest Harlequin romance novels, heroines were typically nurses and secretaries, but as time has passed and women have entered the workforce in larger numbers, romance heroines have spanned the career spectrum. Modern romance novels now feature more balanced relationships between men and women.

4. 
   "Portrait of a Lady"
   

“Portrait of a Lady" is a poem by American-British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), first published in September 1915 in Others: A Magazine of the New Verse. It was published again in March 1916 in Others: An Anthology of the New Verse, in February 1917 (without the epigraph) in The New Poetry: An Anthology, and finally in his 1917 collection of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations.
The poem's title is widely seen to be derived from the novel of the same name by Henry James. The poem's epigraph is a famous quotation from Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta: "Thou hast committed - / Fornication: but that was in another country, / And besides, the wench is dead."
The poem is one of the two main Boston poems written by Eliot, the other being "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It shows upper class society of the time as something rather empty and forlorn. The main focus of the poem, however, is the speaker, who in his own depiction of this upper class lady as soulless and empty, reveals himself as the one who is truly callous and unfeeling.
The poem tells the story of a failed friendship in three episodes, occurring over a period of ten months. In Part I, the speaker visits the Lady's apartment in December after going with her to a concert, reports her talk of friendship, and suggests that he prefers a more vigorous approach to life. In Part II, the Lady complains about her age, envies her visitor's youth, and says that April sunsets and memories of Paris reconcile her with life, "after all"; again, her visitor turns from her to the world of newspapers, sports and comics, though confessing that he also has moments of exquisite regret. In Part III the speaker takes his farewell from the Lady before going abroad; she wonders why they have not become friends, asks him to write to her and describes her melancholy, solitary fate; in the close the speaker thinks of the Lady possibly dying and questions his behavior towards her.
Like many of Eliot's early poems, "Portrait of a Lady" shows heavy influence from Jules Laforgue. For example, in 'Another Complaint of my Lord Pierrot', Laforgue has the lines:
Finally, if one evening she dies amid my books,
Quiet; feigning not yet to trust my sight
I'd try an 'Oh, that; we'd what it takes, it looks.
Then it was serious, all right?'
While Eliot has the lines:
Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon...