The Art of Scandal: The Open Secrets and Illicit Pleasures of the Modern Novel

FAIN: FT-52388-04

Sean Latham
University of Tulsa (Tulsa, OK 74104-9700)

Writers throughout the first half of the twentieth century adapted the genre of the roman à clef (or "novel with a key") to launch a systematic critique of the aesthetic, social, and legal institutions of the novel. The theoretical assumptions governing the current literary field, including its deep suspicion of biographical and intentional criticism, have not only obscured the importance of this genre, but have also condemned the pleasures we derive from texts that cross the fraught boundary between literary fiction and historical reality. I seek support to advance a book-length project that attempts to examine and even redeem these long-suppressed pleasures by constructing a less elitist and more nuanced history of modern narrative.