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roman à clef
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roman à clef


(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 à 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).



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Cather's roman a clef insinuates that Martinez shunned priestly chastity -- a charge that has piqued his defenders.
In 1936, Klaus published his best-known novel, Mephisto: The Story of a Career, in part a roman a clef about the actor Gustaf Grundgens, who'd been one of Klaus's lovers before Gustaf married Erika.
More coming-of-age novel than roman a clef, Tom Dolby's novel The Sixth Form follows the senior year (or "sixth form") of Ethan Whitley--sent to Berkley Academy by his Stanford professor parents after his mother is diagnosed with cancer--and Todd Eldon, who's coming to terms with his sexuality.
 
 
 
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