Är den spicy? : En analys av romance-litteraturens omslag som en representation av kärlek, intimitet och sexualitet.

Sammanfattning

This study examines how love, intimacy and sexuality are represented and constructed on romance book covers from the 1980s to 2025, as well as how gender, gender representation, normative notions of relationships and power are visually represented. Through a visual thematic content analysis of ten selected romance covers, the study investigates how these themes are communicated and evolved. A focus group interview with non-romance readers complement the analysis. The study is informed by Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory to understand the interplay between visual messages and their interpretation. Research on the romance genre's visual communication is limited, making this study relevant for addressing the gap in the literature and increasing understanding of how covers convey the genre's content and norms. The result reveals a clear historical shift. Earlier covers are characterized by explicit physicality, sexualization and hierarchical gender roles, whereas covers after the 2000s are more restrained and stylized. In these later covers, love and intimacy are communicated through glances, color choices, settings and graphic elements rather than explicit body depictions, while sexuality is suggested rather than overtly shown. The focus group perceived older covers as directly communicative but stereotypical. Newer covers meanwhile were seen as more socially acceptable and equal, with greater emphasis on emotional and contextual intimacy, though sometimes perceived as ambiguous in their genre signaling. Overall, the study demonstrates how romance book covers function as visual arenas where the themes mentioned above are reproduced in relation to shifting cultural norms.