Bildungsroman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Bildungsroman (IPA: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.roˌmaːn]/, German: "novel of self-cultivation") is a novelistic form that concentrates on the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the protagonist usually from childhood to maturity. These themes are now often portrayed in films as well as novels.

Bildungsromane usually contain the following course:

• The protagonist grows from boy to man or girl to woman.
• The protagonist must have some reason to go on this journey. A loss or discontent must jar him or her at an early stage away from the home or family setting.
• The process of maturing is long, arduous, and gradual, consisting of repeated clashes between the needs or desires of the hero and the views and judgments enforced by an unbending social order. This bears some similarity to Sigmund Freud's concept of the pleasure principle versus the reality principle.
• Eventually, the spirit and values of the social order become manifest in the protagonist, who is then accommodated into society. The novel ends with an assessment by the protagonist of himself/herself and his/her new place in that society.
• The character is generally making a smooth movement away from conformity. Major conflict is self vs. society or individuality vs. conformity.
• There are themes of exile or escape

Within the 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 other genres include elements of the Bildungsroman as a prominent part of their story lines; for example, a military story frequently shows a raw recruit receiving a baptism of fire and becoming a battle-hardened soldier. A high fantasy quest may also show a transformation from an adolescent protagonist into an adult aware of his/her powers or lineage.

[edit] List of Bildungsromane

• The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
• Anton Reiser by Karl Philipp Moritz
• Beka Lamb by Zee Edgell
• Black Boy by Richard Wright
• The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
• The Chosen by Chaim Potok
• The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
• Demian by Hermann Hesse
• The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson
• Emile: Or, On Education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard
• The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
• David Copperfield, Great Expectations and The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
• Green Henry by Gottfried Keller
• Grendel by John Gardner
• Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
• How Many Miles to Babylon? by Jennifer Johnston
• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Der Nachsommer by Adalbert Stifter
• Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
• Peter Camenzind by Hermann Hesse
• Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
• Red Sky At Morning by Richard Bradford
• Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
• Spies by Michael Frayn
• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
• The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell
• The Telemachy in The Odyssey of Homer
• This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Der Vorleser by Bernhard Schlink
• Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by J.W. Goethe, the paragon of the genre
• Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
• Ranks of Bronze by David Drake
• Nada by Carmen Laforet
• Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
• What Maisie Knew by Henry James

[edit] References

• Buckley, Jerome H., Season of Youth (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974).
• Jeffers, Thomas L., Apprenticeships: The Bildungsroman from Goethe to Santayana (New York: Palgrave, 2005).
• Abrams, M.H. Glossary of Literary Terms - Eighth Edition (Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, 2005).cs:Bildungsroman

da:Dannelsesroman de:Bildungsroman es:Bildungsroman fr:Bildungsroman gl:Bildungsroman nl:Bildungsroman ja:教養小説 no:Dannelsesroman pl:Bildungsroman pt:Bildungsroman ro:Bildungsroman sv:Bildningsroman zh:教育小说