Transgressive Fiction: A History

Transgressive fiction is a genre that focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual and/or illicit ways. Protagonists in Transgressive literature are in one form or other rebelling against society. Due to this they may appear to be anti-social, nihilistic or even sociopathic. Transgressive literature deals with potentially controversial subjects …

Though fiction of this kind has only relatively recently been labelled as Transgressive, its origins lie in the literature of the past. The writing of the Marquis de Sade, Émile Zola and even Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s seminal work, Crime and Punishment, have been described as Transgressive. But it was the following 20th Century authors who came to be viewed as the early exponents of the genre.

James Joyce

February 2nd 1882 – January 13th 1941

Notable Transgressive Work: Ulysses

James Joyce was a central figure in the modernist avant-garde. His seminal work, Ulysses, embraced a revolutionary stream of consciousness style that influenced many later writers. At the time of its publication, the book’s masturbation scene was viewed as so scandalous that it was the subject of an obscenity trial.

D. H. Lawrence

September 11th 1885 – March 2nd 1930

Notable Transgressive Works: Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Rainbow

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, though published was heavily censored, due to what was regarded at the time as its pornographic content. Thirty years after Lawrence’s death Penguin attempted to publish the original version, but were forced to go to trial because of the ‘Obscene Publications Act’ of the previous year.

Vladimir Nabokov

April 22nd 1899 – July 2nd 1977

Notable Transgressive Work: Lolita

Nabokov’s most famous work, Lolita, is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 20th Century. It is also considered one of the most controversial books of all time because of its sensitive subject matter – the protagonist Humbert Humbert’s infatuation with a twelve-year-old girl.

William S. Burroughs

February 5th 1914 – August 2nd 1997

Notable Transgressive Works: Junky, Queer, The Soft Machine, Naked Lunch

Burroughs was a controversial character who rebelled against the social norms of his era by writing about disillusionment, drugs and homosexuality. The non-linear Naked Lunch was perceived as so scandalous at the time of its publication that it underwent a court case under U.S. obscenity laws.

 To be continued …