318
See also: Oedipus the King 34–39 ■ Disgrace 322–23W
hen American author
Donna Tartt (1963–)
published her novel The
Secret History, it was recognized as
a striking addition to the campus-
novel genre, which it both borrows
from and extends. Academic novels
developed in the 1950s, when the
concerns of postwar society were
linked with the literary and cultural
debates taking place on Western
campuses. These novels, set within
the confined space of a university,
often satirize academic life and the
pretentiouness of scholars.The allure of civilization
The Secret History follows a group
of six classics students at an elite
New England university. Using this
setting to focus on various literary
and cultural debates, Tartt expands
on her 1950s predecessors’ use of a
university environment to question
the role of literature, identity, and
the genre itself.
Tartt’s novel is an anti-detective
story that complicates the 19th-
century detective genre. The book
opens with a murder-mystery plot,but it is the motive, not the identity
of the perpetrator, that mystifies
the reader and is gradually revealed
as the plot unfolds. Tartt uses the
premise of a hidden murder among
the six students to explore wider
ideas. Borrowing from Greek
tragedy, she compels her reader to
question whether the “tragic flaw”
in character, a feature of that genre,
does indeed exist. She explores
this question through the plot to
interrogate how and why we use
the literary past in the present.A philosophical murder
For Tartt’s student characters, the
literary is all too real: it is taken to
an explicitly literal extreme in the
form of a murder that pays homage
to the philosophical idea that
“Death is the mother of beauty,”
as one student, Henry, declares.
Whether the murder is indeed to
be interpreted as a playful and
self-conscious literary device that
draws from academic theory, or
perhaps as a critique of theory
itself, is something that Tartt
leaves for her reader to decide. ■IT’S A VERY GREEK IDEA,
AND A PROFOUND ONE.
BEAUTY IS TERROR
THE SECRET HISTORY (1992), DONNA TARTT
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
The campus novelBEFORE
1951 American writer Mary
McCa rthy’s The Groves
of Academe is published. It
is considered one of the first
academic or “campus” novels.1954 The influential book
Lucky Jim, by English writer
Kingsley Amis, develops the
campus genre further through
a plot that follows a young
history lecturer making his
way in a postwar world.1990 The Booker Prize-
winning novel Possession:
A Romance, by English
novelist A. S. Byatt, details a
postmodern historical mystery
set in an academic world.AFTER
2000 The Human Stain by
American writer Philip Roth
follows the complex life story of
a retired classics professor and
the shifting world of academia.US_318-319_History_Bird.indd 318 08/10/2015 13:11