The Bildungsroman Tradition

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The Bildungsroman Tradition
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Key Terminology

• Bildungsroman/Bildungsromane a novel in which
  an adolescent matures into adulthood
• Kuntslerroman/Kuntslerromane a novel in which
  an artist matures from an apprentice to an expert
• Coming-of-Age Novel a contemporary term that is
  often used to refer to both the Entwicklungsroman
  and the Bildungsroman

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What is the Bildungsroman?

• The word Bildungsroman is German in origin. It
  combines the word bildung which means to build
  with roman which means novel. Thus, the
  Bildungsroman is a novel of building or growth
  and development.

• Scholars always capitalize the term Bildungsroman
  to recognize the German custom of capitalizing
  proper nouns. Some scholars will also italicize
  the term.

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History of the Bildungsroman

• The Bildungsroman developed in Europe during the
  18th century, a time when socio-economic changes
  impacted literary production. The downfall of
  the monarchy and the rise of the industrial
  middle class had implications for creative
  writers, as did the growth of Protestantism.

• Rather than writing for an elite audience,
  authors began to write for and about people like
  themselves members of the middle class or
  bourgeoisie. The form they developed was the
  novel, which enabled them to describe everyday
  events in everyday language and to focus on the
  inner lives of characters.

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The Influence of Protestantism

• One of the most important influences on these
  early novelists was the rise of Protestantism.
  While the Catholic faith required members to
  worship God through the intercession of religious
  clerics, the Protestant faith advocated the idea
  that individuals should form their own
  relationships with God.

• Because Protestants believed that one must engage
  in self-reflection in order to assure ones
  salvation, most Protestants became interested in
  human behavior, as they tried to determine what
  sort of upbringing might guarantee that a child
  would develop into an adult who was assured of
  salvation.

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Protestant Reform Encouraged Self-Scrutiny
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The Influence of Democracy

• At the same time that Protestants were
  investigating human nature in relationship to
  salvation, political reformers were advocating
  the creation of governmental structures that we
  would now term democratic.
• During the 18th century, political revolutions
  cropped up in Europe and in the New World.

• In the American colonies, the framers of the
  Constitution and their allies argued that
  education and childhood development were crucial
  to the maintenance of democratic forms of
  government. Many theorists believed that an
  educated citizenry was the only guarantee that a
  democracy could survive.

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Humanists Encouraged the Study of Child
Development
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The Result The Bildungsroman

• By the latter half of the 18th century, religious
  and political changes impacted the creative arts,
  and many novelists began to write texts that
  focused on the best ways for a young man to move
  from adolescence to adulthood. This form of
  novel was called the Bildungsroman.

• The Bildungsroman featured a talented young man
  who
• Left home to get an education both intellectual
  and sexual
• Rebelled against his culture
• Fell in love and rededicated himself to learning
• Returned home, married, and settled in a career.

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The Rise of the Modern Novel

• Although there has been considerable recent
  debate over when or even whether the novel
  "rose" in the 18th century (as the title of Ian
  Watt's 1957 book suggests it did), critics
  generally agree that it was during this period
  that a significant critical discourse regarding
  the novel emerged---that 18th-century novelists
  and critics alike distinguished this "new species
  of writing" (as Samuel Richardson called it in a
  letter of 1741) from the prose fiction and
  nonfiction that preceded it (Bartolomeo).

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The Focus of the Bildungsroman

• The focus of the Bildungsroman is upon change,
  whether it be physical, psychological, or moral.
• Bakhtin calls it the image of a man in the
  process of becoming.
• The emphasis on growth was driven, in part, by
  elaborate 18th-century debates regarding
  childhood development.

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18th-century views of childhood development

• Industrial democracy and the need for an educated
  populace a greater focus on childhood
• Romantic attitudes, which prevailed in the latter
  half of the 18th century, encouraged a view of
  the child as an innocent who stood in constant
  danger of being corrupted by unhealthy
  influences.

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Childhood and the Novel

• Novels became one site for debate regarding the
  nature of childhood and the best manner of
  educating the child towards an idealized
  citizenship in the larger community
• Of course, what constituted idealized
  citizenship would change over time until
  finally many authors began to utilize the form to
  critique the idea of bildung or to criticize
  types of societies in which bildung was stunted.

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Fieldings Tom Jones (1749)
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Goethes The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
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The Female Bildungsroman

• While the Bildungsroman remained a primarily
  male-focused genre, women began to write
  variations that included the progress of a young
  girl from adolescence to adulthood and marriage.
• In the second half of the 19th century, authors
  began to experiment with the idea that a woman
  could take on a vocation but this concept
  wouldnt gain social acceptance until the 20th
  century.

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Austens Emma (1816) Anne of Green Gables (1908)
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The Conservative Nature of the Traditional
Bildungsroman

• The tensions between self and community
• The desire to reign in anarchistic impulses
• The economic importance of the well- regulated
  self
• Male vs Female Diminishment