AN ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH A BILDUNGSROMAN DEVELOPMENT HISTORY: NURTURING THE RISE OF A SUBGENRE FROM ANCIENT BEGINNINGS TO ROMANTICISM

Yıl 2017, Cilt: 5 Sayı: 10, 111 - 141, 20.12.2017

Petru Golban

https://doi.org/10.20304/humanitas.340639

Cited By: 2

Öz

In
English literature, the Bildungsroman, or the novel of formation, emerged as
one of the most popular literary types of fiction among Victorian realists and
many of the most important works of realism are Bildungsromane. But the
Bildungsroman did not emerge suddenly on literary scene in the Victorian Age.
The present study relies on the assumption, supported by Bakhtin, that the
Bildungsroman has its own history of development as a distinct category, form,
type, or subgenre of the novelistic genre, which is in itself a long, complex,
and interesting process of rise and consolidation of a literary pattern,
tradition, and literary system. This process can be summarized as follows: from
the ancient epic and novel to medieval romances to Renaissance picaresque
fiction (continued in the seventeenth century) to (in English literature) the
eighteenth-century rise of the English novel with its strong picaresque
substratum and through romanticism and Goethe (accredited with having
introduced in fiction the element of Bildung)
to the Victorian flourishing of the novel of formation following Carlyle’s
moment of a threefold literary reception of Wilhelm
Meisters Lehrjahre. These are the main conventions which nurture the rise
of the Bildungsroman as a subgenre from ancient beginnings to romanticism.
Among the primary influences on the rise of the Bildungsroman, some belong,
like romantic writings and Goethe’s canonical Bildungsroman, to the level of
“allusion”. Others, like picaresque tradition and certain eighteenth-century
English novels, belong to the level of “intertextuality”. The present article
aims to disclose by its comparative and thematological perspectives of approach
a number of experiences and aspects of literary practice whose diachronic
unfolding should be considered in a study on the development history of the
Bildungsroman. 

Anahtar Kelimeler

fiction, Bildungsroman, literary system, picaresque pattern, the rise of the English novel, romanticism

Kaynakça

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