bildungsroman

Dictionary: bil·dungs·ro·man or Bil·dungs·ro·man (bĭl'dʊngz-rō-män', -dʊngks-) pronunciation

n.
A novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.

[German : Bildung, formation (from Middle High German bildunge , from Old High German bildunga , from bilidōn, to shape , from bilōdi, form, shape) + Roman, novel (from French, a story in the vernacular, novel; see roman).]

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: bildungsroman

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Class of novel derived from German literature that deals with the formative years of the main character, whose moral and psychological development is depicted. It typically ends on a positive note, with the hero's foolish mistakes and painful disappointments behind him and a life of usefulness ahead. It grew out of folklore tales in which a dunce goes out into the world seeking adventure. One of the earliest novelistic developments of the theme, Johann W. von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (1795 – 96), remains a classic example.

For more information on bildungsroman, visit Britannica.com.

Word Overheard: bildungsroman

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When in Rome do like the Romans. When reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, prepare for a bildungsroman:

"In addition to being a bildungsroman, of course, the Harry Potter books are also detective stories, quest narratives, moral fables, boarding school tales and action-adventure thrill rides, and Ms. Rowling uses her tireless gift for invention to thread these genres together..."

Link: Harry Potter Works His Magic Again in a Far Darker Tale

Posted July 18, 2005.

See our Word Overheard blog to see interesting uses of strange words.

Literary Dictionary: Bildungsroman

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Bildungsroman [bil‐duungz‐raw‐mahn] (plural ‐ane), a kind of novel that follows the development of the hero or heroine from childhood or adolescence into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity. The term (‘formation‐novel’) comes from Germany, where Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–6) set the pattern for later Bildungsromane. Many outstanding novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries follow this pattern of personal growth: Dickens's David Copperfield (1849–50), for example. When the novel describes the formation of a young artist, as in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), it may also be called a Künstlerroman. For a fuller account, consult Franco Moretti, The Way of the World (1987).

German Literature Companion: Bildungsroman

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Bildungsroman, a novel in which the chief character, after a number of false starts or wrong choices, is led to follow the right path and to develop into a mature and well-balanced man. The form, which is more common in German literature than in English or French, was initiated by Wieland in his Agathon (1765-6) and notable later examples are Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-6), Tieck's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (1798), G. Keller's Der grüne Heinrich (1854), G. Freytag's Soll und Haben (1855), Stifter's Der Nachsommer (1857), and W. Raabe's Der Hungerpastor (1864). The Bildungsroman occurs more frequently in the 19th c. than in the 20th c., though H. Hesse's Peter Camenzind (1904) has been classified as a Bildungsroman, and Th. Mann's Königliche Hoheit (1909), Der Zauberberg (1924), and in particular his Joseph und seine Brüder (1933-42) might possibly be regarded as ironic instances of the form. Some critics differentiate between Bildungsroman, Erziehungsroman, and Entwicklungsroman, but these terms are barely distinguishable, and there is a perceptible tendency to adopt the last as the generic appellation in place of Bildungsroman. In so far as the element of self-realization is integrated in the author's presentation of society the Bildungsroman is synonymous with Zeitroman.

Obscure Words: bildungsroman

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psychological novel dealing with the early moral development of the protagonist

Word Tutor: bildungsroman

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IN BRIEF: n. - A type of novel that tells about the early development or spiritual education of the main character

Tutor's tip: This word was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

Wikipedia: Bildungsroman

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1 Features
2 Select examples
3 See also
4 References
5 Literature

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]

Features

The bildungsroman generally takes the following course^[2]:

The protagonist grows from child to adult.

The protagonist has a reason to embark upon his or her journey. A loss or some discontent must, at an early stage, jar him or her away from the home or family setting.

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.

Select examples

This is by no means a complete list of Bildungsroman works. Instead, it's a partial list, chronological, that includes selections widely acknowledged to be representative of the genre.

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, by Ibn Tufail (1100s), a precursor of the genre ^[3]
Candide, by Voltaire (1759)^[4]
Emile: or, On Education, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the paragon of the genre (1795–96)
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1847)
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (1850)
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1860–61)
Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert (1869)
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1881-82)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1884)
Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling (1897)
A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster (1908)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce (1914–15)
Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham (1915)
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather (1915)
Demian, by Hermann Hesse (1919)
Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse (1922)
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann (1924)
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque (1928)
Pather Panchali, by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (1929)
Aparajita, by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay (1931)
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951)^[5]
Go Tell it on the Mountain, by James Baldwin (1953)^[6]
Starman Jones by Robert A. Heinlein (1953)
The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham (1955)
The Tin Drum, by Günter Grass (1959)
A Separate Peace, by John Knowles (1959)
Goodbye, Columbus, by Philip Roth (1959)^[7]
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)
Davy by Edgar Pangborn (1964)
Out of the Shelter by David Lodge (1970)
Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya (1972)
Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie (1981)
Lanark: A Life in Four Books, by Alasdair Gray (1981)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson (1985)^[8]
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay (1989)
The Buddha of Suburbia, by Hanif Kureishi (1990)
The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson (1995)
Black Swan Green,by David Mitchell (author) (1996)
The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd (2002)^[9]

References

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

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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bildungsroman

Contents

Features

Select examples

See also

References

Literature