TAKES of Our Time: Romantic Archetypes

This week, we kick off our return to last year's August theme: Spicy Summer, where we take a microscope to different elements of the romance genre, to try and understand what keeps it so enduringly popular. Last year we investigated the reptation of the romance genre, and to what degree it was earned. This year we'll be taking a look at different romantic archetypes, patterns that characters and storylines tend to fall into, and how they play out across a variety of stories in ways both familiar and surprising. To help us introduce the new month's theme, host Amanda Stephens invites back several guests from last year's Spicy Summer and invites them to discuss what they know about archetypes, their opinions on what romance adds to the stories it's often featured in. Special thanks to Emily Daniels, Jared Friesen, and Olek Shyn for their help with this week's interviews.