The English Bildungsroman
M e a n i n g
Friday, March 4, 2011
a n d
C h a r a c t e r i s t i c s
The Realist novel of the nineteenth
century was written in opposition to the
Romance of medieval times
Representation of “real life” experiences
and characters versus ideal love, ideal
moral codes, ideal characters (nobility),
and fixed social values.
George Eliot’s Middlemarch is a great
milestone in the realist tradition.
Friday, March 4, 2011
The novel has a strong tradition in English literature.
In Great Britain, it can trace its roots back to Daniel
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe in 1719 (Kroll 23). Since
then, the British novel has grown in popularity. It
was especially popular in Victorian England. The
type of novel that was particularly popular in
Victorian England was the novel of youth.
Many authors of the time were producing works
focused on the journey from childhood to adulthood:
Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, George Eliot wrote
The Mill on the Floss, and Charles Dickens wrote David
Copperfield and Great Expectations. All of these novels
trace the growth of a child. In this respect, some of
the most popular novels of the nineteenth century
were part of the genre called the Bildungsroman.
Friday, March 4, 2011
The basic formula of the Bildungsroman is
universal and especially appropriate to the
growing world of the Victorian age where the
kind of opportunities presented to the hero of
the Bildungsroman echoed the actual
experiences of those growing up in that era.
Friday, March 4, 2011
In the simplest sense of the word, a
Bildungsroman is a novel of the development of a
young man (or in some cases a young woman). In
fact, the Webster's College Dictionary definition
of Bildungsroman is "a novel dealing with the
education and development of its protagonist".
The Bildungsroman as a genre has its roots in
Germany. Jerome Buckley notes that the word
itself is German, with “Bildung” having a variety
of connotations: "portrait," "picture," "shaping"
and "formation," all of which give the sense of
development or creation “the development of the
child can also be seen as the creation of the
man” (13-14). “Roman” simply means "novel."
Friday, March 4, 2011
The term Bildungsroman emerged as a
description of Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre. This was the first Bildungsroman,
having been published between 1794 and 1796
(Buckley 9). The word "lehrjahre" can be
translated as "apprenticeship".
"Apprenticeship" has many connotations, most of
which deal with education and work. An
apprentice goes to work for an experienced
worker and learns and develops his trade and
also to a greater extent his identity. Similarly, the
Bildungsroman is characterized by the growth,
education, and development of a character both
in the world and ultimately within himself.
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Bildungsroman is subcategorized into very
specific types of the genre, most often found in
German literature. There is the
Entwicklungsroman, which can be defined as
"a chronicle of a young man's general growth
rather than his specific quest for self-culture" .
In other words, a story recounting a man's life
rather than focusing on the inner changes that
contribute to his maturity.
Another form within German literature is the
Erziehungsroman; this form is primarily
concerned with the protagonist's actual
educational process .
Friday, March 4, 2011
The root Kunstler translates as artist in
English. Therefore, this is the
development of the artist from
childhood until his artistic maturity,
focusing on the man as artist rather
than the man in general. Dickens' David
Copperfield and James Joyce's A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man are both
examples of the English Kunstlerroman,
as the protagonists of both books are
writers.
Friday, March 4, 2011
According to Buckley in his book
Seasons of Youth, the Bildungsroman in
English literature is "in its broadest
sense . . . a convenient synonym for the
novel of youth or apprenticeship" (13).
The English Bildungsroman vary from
novel to novel. However, they have
many aspects in common, all of which
are important to the development of
the protagonist.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Part of the development of the child is the desire, as
mentioned earlier, to leave home and become "his own
man." Both the search for identity and the repression of
the small town present motivation for the protagonist to do
just that, and often his destination is London. He also
travels to London to find his trade or occupation. This is
most appropriate for the English Bildungsroman.
An aspect of this new life in the city is that of love. It is
usually here that the hero has his first experience with
love. Buckley writes that there are "at least two love affairs
or sexual encounters, one debasing, one exalting" (17).
Usually, between the debasement of the one love affair
and the disillusionment with the city, the young man takes
the final step in his development. He must reconcile "after
painful soul-searching, the sort of accommodation to the
modern world he can honestly make".
Friday, March 4, 2011
In other words the inner development
and maturity of the protagonist takes
place after his "education" in the city. It
is this newfound self-knowledge that
signals the ultimate maturity of the hero.
With this maturity of course comes
success, and often the protagonist
marries, a recognition of acceptance and
maturity; now that he knows himself he
can share his life with someone else.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Even if the protagonist does not get married, he
returns home to share his successes with his family
or fellow townspeople
Clearly, this is a display of pride in his
accomplishments, and more importantly a search
for external validation, however ironic it may be
that he must return to the place he wanted so
desperately to escape to achieve this validation.
It is with this return home, where the reader is
reminded of who the protagonist was and where he
came from, that his development can most clearly
be delineated. Although he has come full circle, the
memories of the boy that was are perfectly suited to
emphasize the man that he has become.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Obviously, this is a basic definition of the English
Bildungsroman. There are variations within the
genre, and one or more elements may be left out
of a particular novel (Buckley 18). However, the
basic principles of education and development,
and the journey from childhood to adulthood,
from small to large, are present within every
English Bildungsroman.
It is these differences precisely that make each
novel its own story. After all, even though every
person's story is different, they must all go
through stages of development in order to reach
maturity and find their personal niche within the
larger world.
Friday, March 4, 2011