Transgressive fiction is a genre of literature which focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways.

Literary context

Because they are rebelling against the basic norms of society,

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a ...

s of transgressive fiction may seem mentally ill, anti-social, or nihilistic. The genre deals extensively with taboo subject matters such as drugs, sexual activity, violence,

incest Incest ( ) is sexual intercourse, sex between kinship, close relatives, for example a brother, sister, or parent. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by lineag ...

, pedophilia, and crime. The genre of "transgressive fiction" was defined by ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

'' literary critic Michael Silverblatt.Word Watch — December 1996
from '' The Atlantic Monthly''

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault ( , ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French History of ideas, historian of ideas and Philosophy, philosopher who was also an author, Literary criticism, literary critic, Activism, political activist, and teacher. Fo ...

's essay "A Preface to Transgression" (1963) provides an important methodological origin for the concept of transgression in literature. The essay uses '' Story of the Eye'' by

Georges Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 8 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, ...

as an example of transgressive fiction. Foucault, Michel (1963). "A Preface to Transgression." Rene Chun, a journalist for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', described transgressive fiction: The genre has been the subject of controversy, and many forerunners of transgressive fiction, including William S. Burroughs and Hubert Selby Jr., have been the subjects of

obscenity An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin , , "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral ...

trials. Transgressive fiction shares similarities with splatterpunk, noir, and erotic fiction in its willingness to portray forbidden behaviors and shock readers. But it differs in that protagonists often pursue means to better themselves and their surroundings—albeit unusual and extreme ones. Much transgressive fiction deals with searches for self-identity,

inner peace Inner peace (also known as peace of mind) refers to a deliberate state of psychological or spiritual calm maintained despite the presence of stressors. It is associated with a state of psychological "homeostasis" and the opposite of being stress ...

, or personal freedom. Unbound by usual restrictions of taste and literary convention, its proponents claim that transgressive fiction is capable of incisive social commentary.

History

The basic ideas of transgressive fiction are by no means new. Many works that are now considered

classic A classic is an outstanding example of a particular style; something of Masterpiece, lasting worth or with a timeless quality; of the first or Literary merit, highest quality, class, or rank – something that Exemplification, exemplifies its ...

s dealt with controversial themes and harshly criticized societal norms. Early examples include the scandalous writing of the Marquis de Sade and the Comte de Lautréamont's '' Les Chants de Maldoror'' (1869). French author Émile Zola's works about social conditions and "bad behavior" are examples, as are Russian

Fyodor Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and journalist. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in both Russian literature, Russian and world literature, and many of his works are consider ...

's novels '' Crime and Punishment'' (1866) and '' Notes from Underground'' (1864) and Norwegian

Knut Hamsun Knut Hamsun (4 August 1859 – 19 February 1952) was a Norwegian writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1920. Hamsun's work spans more than 70 years and shows variation with regard to conscio ...

's psychologically-driven '' Hunger'' (1890). Sexual extravagance can be seen in two of the earliest European novels, the ''

Satyricon The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius in the late 1st century AD, though the manuscript tradition identifi ...

'' and ''

The Golden Ass The ''Metamorphoses'' of Apuleius, which Augustine of Hippo referred to as ''The Golden Ass'' (Latin: ''Asinus aureus''), is the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in its entirety. The protagonist of the novel is Lucius. At the end of ...

'', and also (with disclaimers) '' Moll Flanders'' and some of the excesses of early

Gothic fiction Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror (primarily in the 20th century), is a literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name of the genre is derived from the Renaissance era use of the word "gothic", as a pejorative to mean me ...

. A simpler, more literal example of transgressive fiction is Kate Chopin's '' The Awakening'', in which a married woman, feeling confined by the gender constructs of her society and pressures imposed upon her by her family and friends to be keen in her duties as a mother and wife, leaves her family and pursues extramarital relationships. Commenting on gender roles of the late 19th century, ''The Awakening'' faced major criticism for its depiction of a woman being unfaithful to her family, despite the fact that Chopin had written several similar short stories prior to ''Awakenings publication. It is now considered to be a landmark of early feminist literature. The early development of the genre was anticipated in the work of early 20th century writers such as Octave Mirbeau,

, and Arthur Schnitzler, who explored psychosexual development. On 6 December 1933, US federal judge John M. Woolsey overturned the federal ban on

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

's '' Ulysses''. The book was banned in the US due to what the government claimed was obscenity, specifically parts of Molly Bloom's "soliloquy" at the end of the book. Random House Inc. challenged the claim of obscenity in federal court and was granted permission to print the book in the US. Judge Woolsey's explanation for his removal of the ban is often quoted: "It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned." In the late 1950s, American publisher Grove Press, under publisher Barney Rosset, began releasing decades-old novels that had been unpublished in most of the English-speaking world for many years due to controversial subject matter. Two of these works, '' Lady Chatterley's Lover'' ( D. H. Lawrence's tale of an upper class woman's affair with a working class man) and ''

Tropic of Cancer The Tropic of Cancer, also known as the Northern Tropic, is the Earth's northernmost circle of latitude where the Sun can be seen directly overhead. This occurs on the June solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun ...

'' ( Henry Miller's sexual odyssey), were the subject of landmark obscenity trials (''Lady Chatterley's Lover'' was also tried in the UK and

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

). Both books were ruled not obscene and forced the US courts to weigh the merit of literature that would have once been instantly deemed pornographic (see

Miller test The ''Miller'' test, also called the three-prong obscenity test, is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the Unite ...

). Similarly, the author

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

published '' Lolita'' in 1955 to a great deal of controversy due to the hebephilia that occurs between the book's main characters, Humbert Humbert and Lolita. The transgressive nature of this subject has made ''Lolita'' a book often found on the list of books banned by governments and the list of most commonly challenged books in the United States. Grove Press also published the explicit works of Beat writers, which led to two more obscenity trials. The first concerned '' Howl'', Allen Ginsberg's 1955 poem which celebrated American

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...

and decried hypocrisy and emptiness in mainstream society. The second concerned William S. Burroughs' hallucinatory,

satirical Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...

novel '' Naked Lunch'' (1959). Both works contained what were considered lewd descriptions of body parts and sexual acts. Grove also published Hubert Selby Jr.'s anecdotal novel '' Last Exit to Brooklyn'' (1964), known for its gritty portrayals of criminals, and sex workers and its crude, slang-inspired prose. ''Last Exit to Brooklyn'' was tried as obscene in the UK. Grove Press won all these trials, and the victories paved the way both for transgressive fiction to be published legally, as well as bringing attention to these works. In the 1970s and '80s, an entire underground of transgressive fiction flourished. Its biggest stars included J. G. Ballard, a British writer known for his strange and frightening

dystopia A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmen ...

n novels; Kathy Acker, an American known for her sex-positive feminist fiction; and

Charles Bukowski Henry Charles Bukowski ( ; born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, ; August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German Americans, German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambien ...

, an American known for his tales of womanizing, drinking, and gambling. The notorious 1971 film version of Anthony Burgess's '' A Clockwork Orange'', contained scenes of rape and "ultraviolence" by a futuristic youth gang complete with its own

argot A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argo ...

, and was a major influence on popular culture; it was subsequently withdrawn in the UK, and heavily censored in the US. In the 1990s, the rise of

alternative rock Alternative rock (also known as alternative music, alt-rock or simply alternative) is a category of rock music that evolved from the independent music underground of the 1970s. Alternative rock acts achieved mainstream success in the 1990s w ...

and its distinctly downbeat subculture opened the door for transgressive writers to become more influential and commercially successful than ever before. This is exemplified by the influence of Canadian

Douglas Coupland Douglas Coupland (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian novelist, designer and visual artist. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller '' Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'', popularized the terms Generation X and McJob. He ...

's 1990 novel '' Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture'', which explored the economically-bleak and

apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre originating in Judaism in the centuries following the Babylonian exile (597–587 BCE) but persisting in Christianity and Islam. In apocalypse, a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a ...

-fixated worldview of Coupland's age group. The novel popularized the term

generation X Generation X (often shortened to Gen X) is the Demography, demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort following the Baby Boomers and preceding Millennials. Researchers and popular media often use the mid-1960s as its starting birth years and the ...

to describe this age demographic. Other influential authors of this decade include Bret Easton Ellis, known for novels about depraved

yuppie Yuppie, short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional", is a term coined in the early 1980s for a young professional person working in a city. The term is first attested in 1980, when it was used as a fairly neu ...

Irvine Welsh Irvine Welsh (born 27 September 1958) is a Scottish novelist and short story writer. His 1993 novel ''Trainspotting (novel), Trainspotting'' was made into a Trainspotting (film), film of the same name. He has also written plays and screenplays, ...

, known for his portrayals of

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

's drug-addicted working class youth; and Chuck Palahniuk, known for his characters' bizarre attempts to escape bland consumer culture. Both of Elizabeth Young's volumes of literary criticism from this period deal extensively and exclusively with this range of authors and the contexts in which their works can be viewed. The early 21st century saw the rise of writers like Rupert Thomson, R. D. Ronald and Kelly Braffet with their protagonists further pushing the criminal, sexual, violent, narcotic, self-harm, anti-social and mental illness related subject matter taboos from the shadows of the transgressive umbrella into the forefront of mainstream fiction. Ronald's novels ''The Elephant Tree'' and ''The Zombie Room'' are based in the fictional city of Garden Heights, providing a fresh, contemporary melting pot to showcase the amalgamation of UK and US cultural and societal dissatisfaction and frustration, that had previously been portrayed very differently. In the UK, the genre owes a considerable influence to "working class literature", which often portrays characters trying to escape poverty by inventive means, while in the US, the genre focuses more on middle class characters trying to escape the emotional and spiritual limitations of their lifestyle.

Notable works

Henry Miller *''

'' (1934) *'' Tropic of Capricorn'' (1939) *'' The Rosy Crucifixion'' (1949–59) William S. Burroughs *'' Junkie'' (1953) *'' Naked Lunch'' (1959)

*'' Story of the Eye'' (1928)

*'' Lolita'' (1955) *'' Ada or Ardor'' (1969) Hubert Selby Jr. *'' Last Exit to Brooklyn'' (1964) *'' Requiem for a Dream'' (1978) J. G. Ballard *'' The Atrocity Exhibition'' (1970) *'' Crash'' (1973) Ryu Murakami *'' Almost Transparent Blue'' (1976) Katherine Dunn * '' Geek Love'' (1989) Kathy Acker *'' Blood and Guts in High School'' (1984) Bret Easton Ellis *'' Less than Zero'' (1985) *'' American Psycho'' (1991) Dennis Cooper *'' Frisk'' (1991)

*'' Trainspotting'' (1993) *'' Filth'' (1998) Matthew Stokoe *''Cows'' (1998) Chuck Palahniuk *'' Fight Club'' (1996) *'' Invisible Monsters'' (1999) *'' Haunted'' (2005) Alissa Nutting *''

Tampa Tampa ( ) is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. Tampa's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and t ...

'' (2013) Blake Butler *'' 300,000,000'' (2014) Elle Nash * '' Animals Eat Each Other'' (2018) *'' Nudes'' (2021) *'' Gag Reflex'' (2022) Chris Kelso *'' The DREGS Trilogy'' (2020) Nikanor Teratologen *''Assisted Living'' (1993) Jason Tanamor *''Anonymous'' (2013) Virginie Despentes * ''Baise-moi (1993)''

* '' Factotum (1975)'' * '' The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories (1983)''

References

Bibliography

* * * * {{cite book , last=Slocombe , first=William , date=2006 , title=Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern: The (Hi)Story of a Difficult Relationship from Romanticism to Postmodernism , location=New York , publisher=

Routledge Routledge ( ) is a British multinational corporation, multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, academic journals, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanit ...

, page=224 , isbn=0-415-97529-8

External links