Bildungsroman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [blds.oman]; English: novel of formation,

education, culture; coming-of-age story)[a][2] is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral
growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood (coming of age),[3] in which character change is extremely
important.[4][5]

Contents
1 Origin
2 Plot outline
3 Examples
3.1 Precursors
3.2 17th century
3.3 18th century
3.4 19th century
3.5 20th century
3.6 21st century
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 Bibliography
8 Further reading
9 External links

Origin
The term was coined in 1819 by philologist Karl Morgenstern in his university lectures, and later famously
reprised by Wilhelm Dilthey, who legitimated it in 1870 and popularized it in 1905.[1][6] The genre is further
characterized by a number of formal, topical, and thematic features.[7] The term coming-of-age novel is
sometimes used interchangeably with Bildungsroman, but its use is usually wider and less technical.

The birth of the Bildungsroman is normally dated to the publication of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by
Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 179596,[8] or, sometimes, to Christoph Martin Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon
of 1767.[9] Although the Bildungsroman arose in Germany, it has had extensive influence first in Europe and
later throughout the world. Thomas Carlyle translated Goethes novel into English, and after its publication in
1824, many British authors wrote novels inspired by it.[10][11] In the 20th century, it spread to Germany,
Britain,[12] France,[13][14] and several other countries around the globe.[15]

The genre translates fairly directly into cinematic form, the coming-of-age film.

Plot outline
A Bildungsroman relates the growing up or "coming of age" of a sensitive person who goes in search of
answers to life's questions with the expectation that these will result from gaining experience of the world. The
genre evolved from folklore tales of a dunce or youngest son/daughter going out in the world to seek his/her
fortune,. Usually in the beginning of the story there is an emotional loss which makes the protagonist leave on
his/her journey. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with
difficulty. The genre often features a main conflict between the main character and society. Typically, the values
of society are gradually accepted by the protagonist and he/she is ultimately accepted into society the
protagonist's mistakes and disappointments are over. In some works, the protagonist is able to reach out and
help others after having achieved maturity.

There are many variations and subgenres of Bildungsroman that focus on the growth of an individual. An
Entwicklungsroman ("development novel") is a story of general growth rather than self-cultivation. An
Erziehungsroman ("education novel") focuses on training and formal schooling, while a Knstlerroman ("artist
novel") is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.[16] Furthermore, some memoirs
and published journals can be regarded as Bildungsroman although being predominantly factual (an example
being The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto "Che" Guevara).[17] The term is also more loosely used to describe
coming-of-age films and related works in other genres.

Examples
Precursors
Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, by Ibn Tufail (12th
century)[18]
Parzival, by Wolfram von Eschenbach (early
13th century)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th
century)
Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)[19]
17th century
Simplicius Simplicissimus, by Hans Jakob
Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1668)
The Adventures of Telemachus, by Franois
Fnelon (1699)
18th century
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by
Henry Fielding (1749)[20]
Candide, by Voltaire (1759)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy,
Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne (1759)[20]
Emile, or On Education, by Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (1763)
Geschichte des Agathon, by Christoph Martin
Wieland (1767)often considered the first
"true" Bildungsroman[9]
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann
Wolfgang Goethe (179596)[21]
19th century
Emma, by Jane Austen (1815)
The Red and The Black, by Stendhal (1830)
The Captain's Daughter, by Alexander Pushkin
(1836)
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bront (1847)[22]
Pendennis, by William Makepeace Thackeray
(18481850)
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1850)
Green Henry, by Gottfried Keller (1855)[23]
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1861)
Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert
(1869)
The Adventures of Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi
(1883)
The Story of an African Farm, by Olive
Schreiner (1883)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark
Twain (1884)
Pharaoh, by Bolesaw Prus (1895)
What Maisie Knew, by Henry James (1897)[24]
20th century
The Confusions of Young Trless, by Robert
Musil (1906)
Martin Eden, by Jack London (1909)[25]
The Book of Khalid, by Ameen Rihani
(1911)[26]
Le Grand Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier (1913)
Sons and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence (1913)[27]
Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham
(1915)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by
James Joyce (1916)[16]
Demian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth by
Hermann Hesse (1919, prologue added in 1960)
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson (1919)
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(1920)[28]
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924).
Pather Panchali, by Bibhutibhushan
Bandopadhyay (1929)[29]
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
(1936)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale
Hurston (1936)
Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)
 A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
(1943)
The Green Years by A. J. Cronin (1944)
The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger
(1951)[30]
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (for plot
character Eustace Scrubb) by C. S. Lewis
(1952)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952)
Children of Violence by Doris Lessing (1952-
1969)[31]
In the Castle of My Skin, by George Lamming
(1953)[32]
Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth (1959)[33]
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles (1959)
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (1960)[30]
Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965)[34]
The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton (1967)[35]
A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin
(1968)[36]
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya
Angelou (1969)
Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya (1972)
The World According to Garp, by John Irving
(1978)
The Discovery of Slowness, by Sten Nadolny
(1983)
"The House on Mango Street", by Sandra
Cisneros (1984)
Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney
(1984)[37]
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card (1985)[35]
The Cider House Rules, by John Irving (1985)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette
Winterson (1985)[38]
Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami
(1987)[39]
A Prayer For Owen Meany, by John Irving
(1989)
Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry (1989)
See also
Bildung
Knstlerroman
Mirrors for princes
Roman a clef
Notes
a. Engel explains that the term has in recent years been applied to very different novels but originally meant
a novel of formation of a character, of an individual personality in interaction (including conflict) with
society. He also points out that it was, like the "novel of education" (Erziehungsroman), a subgenre of the
"novel of development" (Entwicklungsroman).[1]
Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder (1991)
English Music, by Peter Ackroyd (1992)[40]
The Gods Laugh on Mondays, by Reza
Khoshnazar (1995)
Harry Potter, by J. K. Rowling (1997)
About a Boy, by Nick Hornby (1998)
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen
Chbosky (1999)[41]
Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi (2000)[42]
21st century
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd
(2002)[43]
The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold (2002)[44]
The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini (2003)[45]
The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem
(2003) [46]
Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)[30]
Looking for Alaska, by John Green (2005)
Indecision, by Benjamin Kunkel (2005)[47]
Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell
(2006)[48]
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time
Indian, by Sherman Alexie (2007)
Indignation, by Philip Roth (2008).[b]
Submarine, by Joe Dunthorne (2008)
Breath, by Tim Winton (2008)
Paper Towns, by John Green (2008)
The Solitude of Prime Numbers, by Paolo
Giordano (2008)
Why We Took the Car, by Wolfgang Herrndorf
(2010)
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt (2013)
"Miss E.", by Brian Herberger (2016)
Come and Take It, by Cody WIlson (2016)
The Idiot, by Elif Batuman (2017)
 b. Back of the French translation in the "Folio" collection (ditions Gallimard, 2010): "[...] Avec ce roman
d'apprentissage, Philip Roth poursuit son analyse de l'histoire de l'Amrique celle des annes
cinquante, des tabous et des frustrations sexuelles et de son impact sur la vie d'un homme jeune, isol,
vulnrable."

References
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Bibliography
Abel, Elizabeth, Marianne Hirsch, and Elizabeth Langland. 1983. The Voyage In: Fictions of Female
Development. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Mikhail. 1996. "The Bildungsroman and its Significance in the History of Realism." In
Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin, Tex.:
University of Texas Press, 1059.
Engel, Manfred (2008): Variants of the Romantic 'Bildungsroman' (with a Short Note on the 'Artist
Novel')". In: Gerald Gillespie, Manfred Engel and Bernard Dieterle (eds.), Romantic Prose Fiction (= A
Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, vol. XXIII; ed. by the International
Comparative Literature Association). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 263295. ISBN
978-90-272-3456-8.
Iversen, Anniken Telnes (2009): Change and Continuity: The Bildungsroman in English. University of
Troms, Munin.
Jeffers, Thomas L. (2005). Apprenticeships: The Bildungsroman from Goethe to Santayana. New York:
Palgrave. ISBN 1-4039-6607-9.
Lynch, Jack (1999) Glossary of Literary and Rhetorical Terms, entry for bildungsroman, Rutgers
University
Summerfield, Giovanna; Downward, Lisa (2010). New Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman.
London; New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-1441108531.
Abrams, M. H. (2005). Glossary of Literary Terms (8th ed.). Boston: Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 1-
4130-0218-8.
Feng, Pin-chia Kingston A. 1997. The Female Bildungsroman by Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong
Kingston: A Postmodern Reading, Modern American Literature: New Approaches. New York: Peter
Lang.
Japtok, Martin Michael. 2005. Growing up Ethnic: Nationalism and the Bildungsroman in African-
American and Jewish-American Fiction. University of Iowa Press.
Karafilis, Maria. 1998. "Crossing the Borders of Genre: Revisions of the Bindungsroman in Sandra
Cisneros's the House on Mango Street and Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John." Journal of the Midwest
Modern Language Association. 31, no. 2: 6378.
Minden, Michael (1997): The German Bildungsroman: Incest and Inheritance. Cambridge: Cambridge
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Moretti, Franco. 1987. The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture. London: Verso.
Nyatetu-Waigwa, Wangari wa. 1996. The Liminal Novel: Studies in the Francophone-African Novel as
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Contributions to Asian American Literary Studies. Lit Verlag.

Further reading
Madden, David (1980). "Bildungsroman". A Primer of the Novel: For Readers and Writers. Metuchen,
NJ: Scarecrow Press. pp. 1819. ISBN 978-0810812659.
Revised edition, with bibliographic updates by Charles Bane and Sean M. Flory (Scarecrow Press, 2006).
ISBN 978-0810857087
Slaughter, Joseph R. (2011). "Bildungsroman/Knstlerroman". In Logan, Peter Melville. The
Encyclopedia of the Novel. 1. Oxford; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 9397. ISBN 978-1-4051-
6184-8.

External links
The Bildungsroman Project - academic digital humanities project featuring user-submitted articles on
genre examplars and contemporary personal narratives, edited by English literature professor Katherine
Carlson
Bildungsroman Explained
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bildungsroman&oldid=792302466"

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