Bildungsroman

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A bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.roˌmaːn]; German: "novel of education") is a coming-of-age kind of novel. It arose during the German Enlightenment. In it, the author presents the psychological, moral and social shaping of the personality of a character, usually the protagonist. The term Bildungsroman was coined by Johann Carl Simon Morgenstern.[1]

Contents

[edit] Features

The bildungsroman generally takes the following course[2]:* The process of maturation is long, arduous and gradual, involving repeated clashes between the hero's (protagonist's) needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order. This conflict bears some similarity to Sigmund Freud's concept of the pleasure principle versus the reality principle; a prominent example is the book A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.

  • Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifested in the protagonist, who is ultimately incorporated into the society. The novel ends with the protagonist's assessment of himself and his new place in that society.

Within the broader genre, an entwicklungsroman is a story of general growth rather than self-culture; an erziehungsroman focuses on training and formal education; and a künstlerroman is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.

Many genres other than the bildungsroman can include elements of it as prominent parts of their story lines. For example, a military story might show a raw recruit receiving a baptism by fire and becoming a battle-hardened soldier, while a high-fantasy quest story may show a transformation from an adolescent protagonist into an adult who is aware of his or her lineage or powers. Neither of those genres or stories, however, corresponds exactly to the bildungsroman.

[edit] Select examples

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Reinhard Markner; Johann Carl Simon Morgenstern (German)
  2. ^ Marianne Hirsch. "From Great Expectations to Lost Illusions: The Novel of Formation as Genre," Genre, XII, 3 (1979), 293-311.
  3. ^ Joy Palmer, Liora Bresler, David Edward Cooper (2001), Fifty major thinkers on education: from Confucius to Dewey, Routledge, p. 34, ISBN 0415231264 
  4. ^ http://fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/voltaire/candide.htm
  5. ^ Sparknotes:Catcher in the Rye:Themes
  6. ^ eNotes: Go Tell it on the Mountain, James Baldwin
  7. ^ Kercheval, Jesse Lee. "Continuing Conflict". Building Fiction. The Story Press. pp. 101. ISBN 1884910289. 
  8. ^ Sparknotes:Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: Context
  9. ^ Sparknotes:Secret Life of Bees-Character Analysis

[edit] Literature

  • Abrams, M. H. (2005). Glossary of Literary Terms (Eighth Edition ed.). Boston: Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 1413002188. 
  • Engel, Manfred: Variants of the Romantic »Bildungsroman« (with a short note on the »artist novel«). In: Gerald Gillespie/Manfred Engel/Bernard Dieterle (eds.), Romantic Prose Fiction (= A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, Bd. XXIII; ed. by the International Comparative Literature Association). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins 2008, pp. 263–295. ISBN 978-9027234568.
  • Jeffers, Thomas L. (2005). Apprenticeships: The Bildungsroman from Goethe to Santayana. New York: Palgrave. ISBN 1403966079. 
  • Minden, Michael: The German Bildungsroman: Incest and Inheritance. Cambridge: CUP 1997.
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