roman à clef

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French roman à clef (literally “novel with a key”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɹoːˌmɑ̃aˈklej/

Noun

roman à clef (plural romans à clef)

1. A piece of fiction, especially a novel, describing real-life people or events.
   • 2007, A. Zurcher, Seventeenth-Century English Romance: Allegory, Ethics, and Politics, Springer, →ISBN, page 9:

     I want to emphasize that in this respect my account of romance differs substantially from both Annabel Patterson's argument that the primary purpose of roman à clef in early modern England was to avoid censorship and Michael McKeon's […]

   • 2009, Sean Latham, The Art of Scandal: Modernism, Libel Law, and the Roman à Clef, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 57:

     In the end, the fragmentary nature of the text and Dora's abrupt decision to terminate her treatment indicate that as a narrative technology, the roman à clef fails. This owes less to the particulars of the individual case, however, than to Freud's […]

   • 2011, S. Nair, Secrecy and Sapphic Modernism: Writing Romans à Clef Between the Wars, Springer, →ISBN, page 23:

     However, I would argue that this feature of the roman à clef need not be characterized as an impediment to interpretation. If the layered address contained in novels that encrypt references to the 'real' is acknowledged as itself a characteristic […]

Hypernyms

• fictionalisation
• fictionalization

Related terms

• film à clef

Further reading

• roman à clef on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Noun

roman à clef m (plural romans à clef)

1. a roman à clef