See Also: roman a clef(encyclopedia)
clef(encyclopedia)
clef(dictionary)
clef(dictionary)
clef (as used in expressions)(encyclopedia)
treble clef(dictionary)
bass clef(dictionary)
Roman(1)(dictionary)
Roman law(dictionary)
Roman(3)(dictionary)

roman a clef (sh)




(French; "novel with a key")

Novel that has the extraliterary interest of portraying identifiable people more or less thinly disguised as fictional characters.

The tradition dates to 17th-century France, when members of aristocratic literary coteries included in their historical romances representations of well-known figures in the court of Louis XIV. A more recent example is W. Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale (1930), widely held to portray Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole. A more common type of roman a clef is one in which the disguised characters are easily recognized only by a few insiders, as in Simone de Beauvoir's The Mandarins (1954).