"roman à clef" meaning in English

See roman à clef in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ɹoːˌmɑ̃aˈklej/ Forms: romans à clef [plural]
Etymology: Borrowed from French roman à clef (literally “novel with a key”). Etymology templates: {{bor|en|fr|roman à clef|lit=novel with a key}} French roman à clef (literally “novel with a key”) Head templates: {{en-noun|romans à clef|nolinkhead=1}} roman à clef (plural romans à clef)
  1. A piece of fiction, especially a novel, describing real-life people or events. Categories (topical): Fiction, Literary genres Hypernyms: fictionalisation, fictionalization Related terms: film à clef

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for roman à clef meaning in English (3.2kB)

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  "etymology_text": "Borrowed from French roman à clef (literally “novel with a key”).",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
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        {
          "ref": "2007, A. Zurcher, Seventeenth-Century English Romance: Allegory, Ethics, and Politics, Springer, page 9",
          "text": "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 […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Sean Latham, The Art of Scandal: Modernism, Libel Law, and the Roman à Clef, Oxford University Press, page 57",
          "text": "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 […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2011, S. Nair, Secrecy and Sapphic Modernism: Writing Romans à Clef Between the Wars, Springer, page 23",
          "text": "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 […]",
          "type": "quotation"
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      "id": "en-roman_à_clef-en-noun-0CZBZMWx",
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      "related": [
        {
          "word": "film à clef"
        }
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      "ipa": "/ɹoːˌmɑ̃aˈklej/"
    }
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  "word": "roman à clef"
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      "name": "bor"
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  ],
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          "text": "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 […]",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
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          "text": "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 […]",
          "type": "quotation"
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    {
      "ipa": "/ɹoːˌmɑ̃aˈklej/"
    }
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  "word": "roman à clef"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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