donnée

plural données

1. A given; in a literary work, that which is assumed as to characters, situation, etc., as a basis for the plot or story.

   The donnée is from Boccaccio's Decameron, where a party of Florentine gentry flee to the countryside to escape the Black Death.

   1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae

   2 more examples

   We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.

   1884, Henry James, The Art of Fiction

   There is also some similarity between the general subject of both, which is that favourite romance donnée of the heir kept out of his own.

   1911, George Saintsbury, A Short History of English Literature, page 86