succès de scandale

English

Alternative forms

• succes de scandale

Etymology

Borrowing from French succès de scandale.

Noun

succès de scandale

1. The success of work of art due primarily to scandalous subject matter rather than artistic merit.
   • 2010, Hugh Trevor-Roper, History and the Enlightenment, →ISBN, page 163:

     The book was a success – of a kind: a succès de scandale; but it secured him a valuable patron.

   • 2014, May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel, →ISBN:

     She, on the other hand, was famous or infamous as the writer of a first novel which had had a succès de scandale ... the last thing she had wanted or expected, not realizing that honest probing of matters generally discussed with lifted eyebrows at dinner tables could shock.

   • 2014, Kathy Lette, Courting Trouble, →ISBN:

     She first achieved succès de scandale as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, which was made into a major film and a TV miniseries.

   • 2014, Jennifer Birkett, Kate Ince, Samuel Beckett, →ISBN:

     In 1972, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari registered a succès de scandale with the French publication of Anti-Oedipus, now widely considered one of the most important poststructuralist texts.

   • 2015, Vincent Giroud, Nicolas Nabokov: A Life in Freedom and Music, →ISBN:

     Nabokov may well have attended also, in early June 1921, the Busch-conducted premiere of Paul Hindemith's one-act operas Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen, and Das NuschNuschi, a major succès de scandale.