The Textuality of Pleasure

Because of the differences between reading simpliater and reading cultura, a danger lies in projecting a sophisticated conception of reading on a mass of readers who, after surviving the required curriculum, still enjoy a Danielle Steele romance or a James Patterson thriller. Seductively Yours does have an Aristotelian structure: the love interest, haunted by a family curse, suffers the flaw of pride; town gossip serves as the chorus; the action builds through a series of conflicts and reversals that threaten fated love. Rather than the chiseled stone of the poetic object, we have the texture of waves on the open ocean or the changing patterns of water in a running stream.