roman à clef

(rō-mäN' ä klā')
n., pl., ro·mans à clef (rōmäN' zä klā').
A novel in which actual persons, places, or events are depicted in fictional guise.

[French : roman, novel + à, with + clef, key.]

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For more information on roman à clef, visit Britannica.com.

roman à clef [roh‐mahⁿ a klay], the French term (‘novel with a key’) for a kind of novel in which the well‐informed reader will recognize identifiable persons from real life thinly disguised as fictional characters. A significant English example is Thomas Love Peacock's satirical novel Nightmare Abbey (1818), in which ‘Mr Flosky’ is clearly the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Mr Cypress’ is Lord Byron, and ‘Scythrop’ is Percy Bysshe Shelley. Very many novels based upon their authors' own lives are to some degree romans à clef.

(roh-mahn ah klay)

A novel in which actual people and places are disguised as fictional characters. Roman à clef is French for “novel with a key.”

For a list of words related to roman à clef, see:

• Schools, Styles, and Forms - roman à clef: French. novel depicting real persons and actual events under fictional names
• French - roman à clef: novel depicting historical figures under fictional names

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See words rhyming with "roman-à-clef."