Line #14 Main/BiographyAClef


1	A RomanAClef is a novel with a key, a fictional story by a writer with real people and events fictionalized in a blatant SerialNumbersFiledOff manner. The novel is supposed to serve as a key, a guidebook to understanding some real people with allusions and references to make people guess the real person.
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3	Well, two can play that game. You see, for most people, the work of the artist is all they know and care about that artist. In some cases, it's all that they will know about that artist, especially if they are a ReclusiveArtist or if they lived in a time where way too little is knowable about him or her. If people decide to tell the story of that artist's life, they are going to find a way to shoehorn, in some way or form, aspects of his creations into that biography, which ends up making it a metafictional OriginsEpisode, or in some cases provide {{Futureshadowing}}. All biographical works of famous people take ArtisticLicenseHistory and other creative liberties as a given. Different incidents are merged or cut for smoother narrative flow. This happens even when the subject in question has life that is full of excitement, whether its the lives of famous kings, soldiers, lawyers, politicians and other historical worthies. Unlike other biographical subjects, the artist by nature doesn't usually have an exciting life. If he's a poet, a {{painter\|s}}, a {{sculptor\|s}}, a musician and had a long and successful career, most of that involved thinking in rooms, working hard in a corner, maybe doing some acts of recreation. It's not inherently a very dramatic life. Of course some artists do have exciting and very dramatic lives (Creator/VincentVanGogh for instance) but most artists don't. Their works might be very famous and well known and be adapted in turn but [[WhoWouldWantToWatchUs nobody would think that their lives were interesting enough to support a biography]]. But because the artist is well known, someone decides to make a biographical work anyway and this leaves writers and producers scratching their heads how to make it work.
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5	One way to do it is mix the artist's life with their fiction. Creator/ArthurConanDoyle wrote DetectiveFiction, so have him investigate real crimes and more or less play Sherlock Holmes[[note]]which, to be fair, he actually ''did'' once or twice[[/note]]. Here's Charles Dickens having a terrible childhood like Oliver Twist, having his pocket picked by TheArtfulDodger, who makes Dickens think IShouldWriteABookAboutThis. Works using this trope vary from being sly and playful, to straight drama to outright MetaFiction. While examples of this trope do exist in earlier times, it certainly took off big time in the 20th Century, where psychology and other ideas made many people try and analyse works of art as an expression of the artist's personality. Biography à Clef more or less makes that subtext literal.
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7	Overlaps with SidelongGlanceBiopic, RomanAClef, AndYouWereThere, ArtisticLicenseHistory, BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy. Not to be confused with metafictional works or self-reflexive stories where artists deliberately insert a fictional version of themselves into the work (that's DirectLineToTheAuthor), or with CreatorCameo, or SelfInsertFic. Marginally fictionalized {{Biopic}} like Film/{{Amadeus}} does not fit because there the reality is fictionalized as opposed to Mozart's own creations shown interacting and influencing the author along the way.
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9	!!Examples:
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12	[[folder:Comic Books]]
13	* Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/{{Providence}}'' is a SidelongGlanceBiopic of Creator/HPLovecraft where his many fictional creations (The Church of Starry Wisdom, the Old Ones, Nyarlathothep) are not only presented as real, but as TheManBehindTheMan of Lovecraft's own life, covertly influencing him towards creating his famous works, which they see as a prophecy to bring about the Apocalypse.
14	* Creator/NeilGaiman's Shakespeare episodes in ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'' features this trope. In the first case, he has Shakespeare present a unique theater production of ''Theatre/AMidsummerNightsDream'' to TheFairFolk which actually inspired that play, which is here presented as a commission to Shakespeare's company from Morpheus to impress Titania. Earlier folkloric versions of Titania and Puck comment on their fictional representations in Shakespeare's play.
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17	[[folder:Fan Works]]
18	* ''George Lucas in Love'' show the young filmmaker finding inspiration all around in creating the ''Franchise/StarWars'' trilogy, not the least from a beautiful girl with a familiar hairstyle...[[spoiler:who turns out to be his long-lost sister.]]
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21	[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]
22	* ''Hammett'' by Creator/WimWenders (produced by Creator/FrancisFordCoppola) has the author of modern detective fiction as a private eye navigating a complex FilmNoir plot. Unusual example because Creator/DashiellHammett really ''was'' a Pinkerton detective before he was a novelist but the film is obviously metafictional with Hammett as a Sam Spade type. The cast is also filled with supporting actors from old FilmNoir, including Elisha Cook, Jr. (the "gunsel" from Creator/JohnHuston's adaptation of ''Film/{{The Maltese Falcon\|1941}}'').
23	* ''Film/ShakespeareInLove'' is perhaps the TropeCodifier for mainstream audiences. It directly led to a slew of imitators, and it has Creator/WilliamShakespeare having writer's block, which he fixes when he enters into a StarCrossedLovers with Viola, a SweetPollyOliver who dresses as an actor and appears in one of his plays. This gives him the experience he needs to make ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' and directly inspiring ''Theatre/TwelfthNight''.
24	* ''Film/{{Moliere}}'' is a 2007 French film patterned on ''Shakespeare in Love''. It mixes Creator/{{Moliere}}'s life with that of his fiction, shown as an attempt at MethodActing on the part of the author.
25	* ''Film/{{Kafka}}'' by Creator/StevenSoderbergh starring Creator/JeremyIrons shows the author as an UnluckyEverydude navigating an absurd system with many characters and tropes drawn from his short stories and novels present as biographical experiences.
26	* ''Film/NakedLunch'' is about Creator/WilliamSBurroughs shooting his wife and traveling to Interzone on the orders of insects that talk out of their asses. Creator/DavidCronenberg didn't even attempt to faithfully translate the even more bizarre book to the screen (a virtual impossibility), instead opting to make it an amalgam of Burroughs' work and life.
27	* ''Film/TimeAfterTime'' is the best known of several "Creator/HGWells really did build Literature/TheTimeMachine" stories.
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30	[[folder:Literature]]
31	* Creator/AnthonyBurgess' ''Nothing Like the Sun'' fictionalizes a relationship between Shakespeare and the West-Indian prostitute Lucy Negra, under the theory that the latter is the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's famous sonnets, including the famous one that gives the novel its title.
32	* J. M. Coetzee's ''The Master of Petersburg'' features Creator/FyodorDostoevsky as the hero investigating a conspiracy reeling over the death of his son Pavel, and manipulated by the real-life Sergei Nechayev a la Hannibal Lecter/Clarice. An unusual example in that these are all real-life figures but fictionalized by the author (Pavel did not die, he outlived Dostoevsky[[note]]Dostoevsky had another son who died, Alyosha, but that was years later and that incident inspired his final novel Literature/TheBrothersKaramazov[[/note]], and Dostoevsky only attended Nechayev's trial and not interview him personally) but it's presented in a fictionalized manner to dramatize how Dostoevsky wrote ''Literature/{{Demons}}''.
33	* Creator/VladimirNabokov was especially contemptuous of tropes of this nature. His novel ''Literature/PaleFire'' parodies this mentality via the famous footnotes where the scholar asserts that the fictional poet John Shade based the poem on himself and that his adventurous and surprisingly swashbuckling life is reflected in the poem, and more or less goes mad as the story goes along.
34	* In ''Literature/SomethingMoreThanNight'' by Creator/KimNewman, mystery writer Creator/RaymondChandler and horror movie star Creator/BorisKarloff team up to investigate a mystery and encounter supernatural goings-on like the ones in Karloff's movies.
35	* The title character of ''Literature/{{Dodger}}'' meets and inspires Creator/CharlesDickens, although it's not ''quite'' as straightforward as "he was the real life Artful Dodger", since the notes Dickens makes also inspire elements of Literature/OliverTwist himself and Pip from ''Literature/GreatExpectations''.
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38	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
39	* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
40	** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS22E5Timelash "Timelash"]] has Creator/HGWells taking a trip in the TARDIS which not only inspires ''Literature/TheTimeMachine'', but also elements of ''Literature/TheInvisibleMan'', ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds'' and ''Literature/TheIslandOfDoctorMoreau''. (As ''Doctor Who: The Completely Useless Encyclopaedia'' puts it, it's arguably a bit insulting, since it suggests he couldn't have just made any of these things up.)
41	** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode "The Shakespeare Code"]] has Creator/WilliamShakespeare encounter three Carrionites, beings who resemble traditional witches. The story also features the Doctor making various Shakespeare quotes which Shakespeare hasn't written yet. This is inverted when the Doctor quotes ''Theatre/HenryV'' and Shakespeare says he likes that... before realizing its one of his.
42	* ''Series/MurderRooms'' is about medical student Creator/ArthurConanDoyle acting as TheWatson to Dr Joseph Bell, his tutor and the admitted inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. ThePilot has a scene of Bell demonstrating the SherlockScan on Doyle's pocketwatch that is taken straight from ''The Sign of Four'', replacing Watson's brother with Doyle's father.
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45	[[folder:Opera]]
46	* Music/JacquesOffenbach's ''Theatre/TheTalesOfHoffmann'' is a famous pre-20th Century version. It presents Creator/ETAHoffmann himself narrating stories from his life, all of them adapted from his own tales ''Literature/{{The Sandman\|1816}}, Rath Krespell, A New Year Eve's Adventure'', but presented as life experiences that he will eventually use to write his fiction.
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49	[[folder:Video Games]]
50	* ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' features this trope when it depicts artists as HistoricalDomainCharacter.
51	** In ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII'' and ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedBrotherhood'', it presents Creator/LeonardoDaVinci's famous drawings and plans of a flying machine/tank/aircraft/machine gun as functional prototypes for war machines that he built for Cesare Borgia. His genius and interest in codes and numbers also shows up in ''The Da Vinci Disappearance'' where he's kidnapped by a cult of Hermeticists who are seeking a Pythagorean Temple.
52	** In the same games, Creator/NiccoloMachiavelli is shown getting the inspiration for his ideas about his political philosophy in ''Literature/ThePrince'' by observing the PlayerCharacter lead by love and respect and undermine the Borgia who rule entirely by tyranny.
53	** ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedSyndicate'' has the "Dreadful Crimes DLC" where little Artie is a supporting character to a Penny Dreadful writer Henry Raymond who engages the player character to solve a series of riddles using deduction and logic. At the end of the adventure little Artie turns out to be a YoungFutureFamousPeople version of Creator/ArthurConanDoyle who in the course of the side-missions has met the inspirations for Moriarty and Holmes.
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56	[[folder:Western Animation]]
57	* "Metal Fish", an episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{The Little Mermaid\|1992}}'' has Ariel rescuing a human travelling on a primitive submarine and getting him to land. Said man turns out to be none other than Creator/HansChristianAndersen, the author of the original story which inspired the Disney cartoon. The final scene of the episode has the survivor narrating this story to Danish children.
58	* Similarly, "Tarzan and the Mysterious Visitor", an episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfTarzan'', had an American reporter named "Ed" investigating the rumours of the Ape-Man, and revealed in the final scene to be Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs. (Particularly appropriate, as Burroughs often made use of DirectLineToTheAuthor.)
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