Inliterary criticism, a Bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.ʁoˌmaːn], plural Bildungsromane, German pronunciation: [ˈbɪldʊŋs.ʁoˌmaːnə]) is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age),[1] in which character change is important.[2][3][4][a] The term comes from the German words Bildung ("education", alternatively "forming") and Roman ("novel").
The term was coined in 1819 by philologist Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern in his university lectures, and was later famously reprised by Wilhelm Dilthey, who legitimized it in 1870 and popularized it in 1905.[5][6] The genre is further characterized by a number of formal, topical, and thematic features.[7] The term coming-of-age novel is sometimes used interchangeably with bildungsroman, but its use is usually wider and less technical.
The birth of the bildungsroman is normally dated to the publication of Wilhelm Meister's ApprenticeshipbyJohann Wolfgang von Goethe in 1795–96,[8] or, sometimes, to Christoph Martin Wieland's Geschichte des Agathon of 1767.[9] Although the bildungsroman arose in Germany, it has had extensive influence first in Europe and later throughout the world. Thomas Carlyle's English translation of Goethe's novel (1824) and his own Sartor Resartus (1833–34), the first English bildungsroman, inspired many British novelists.[10][11][12] In the 20th century, it spread to France[13][14] and several other countries around the globe.[15]
Barbara Whitman noted that the Iliad might be the first Bildungsroman. It is not just "the story of the Trojan War. The Trojan War is in effect the backdrop for the story of Achilles' development. At the beginning Achilles is still a rash youth, making rash decisions which cost dearly to himself and all around him. (...) The story reaches its conclusion when Achilles has reached maturity and allows King Priam to recover Hector's body".[16]
The genre translates fairly directly into the cinematic form, the coming-of-age film.
A bildungsroman is a growing up or "coming of age" of a generally naive person who goes in search of answers to life's questions with the expectation that these will result in gaining experience of the world. The genre evolved from folklore tales of a dunce or youngest child going out in the world to seek their fortune.[17] Usually in the beginning of the story, there is an emotional loss which makes the protagonist leave on their journey. In a bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty. The genre often features a main conflict between the main character and society. Typically, the values of society are gradually accepted by the protagonist and they are ultimately accepted into society—the protagonist's mistakes and disappointments are over. In some works, the protagonist is able to reach out and help others after having achieved maturity.
Franco Moretti "argues that the main conflict in the Bildungsroman is the myth of modernity with its overvaluation of youth and progress as it clashes with the static teleological vision of happiness and reconciliation found in the endings of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and even Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice".[18]
There are many variations and subgenres of bildungsroman that focus on the growth of an individual. An Entwicklungsroman ("development novel") is a story of general growth rather than self-cultivation. An Erziehungsroman ("education novel") focuses on training and formal schooling,[19] while a Künstlerroman ("artist novel") is about the development of an artist and shows a growth of the self.[20] Furthermore, some memoirs and published journals can be regarded as bildungsroman although claiming to be predominantly factual (e.g. The Dharma BumsbyJack Kerouacor The Motorcycle DiariesbyErnesto "Che" Guevara).[21] The term is also more loosely used to describe coming-of-age films and related works in other genres.
The two early English Bildungsromane already mentioned, Tom Jones and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, are examples of coming-of-age narratives that predate the generic expectations of the German tradition.
Candide exhibits several of the traits of the "traditional" or Germanic Bildungsroman, particularly the depiction of the development of an individual through travel. As a catalogue of the horrors of the modern world, Candide — perhaps more than any of the other texts examined in this book—lives up to Moretti's articulation of the Bildungsroman as the "'symbolic form' of modernity" (5). Read from an ecocultural perspective, this philosophical Bildungsroman suggests the limitations of Dialectic 's conceptions of the Enlightenment and the subject with a model, albeit a modest one, for interaction with the world outside of rationalism's logic of domination.
In her introduction to the 1986 Virago edition, Holly Eley calls it "primarily a love story" and also "an account of a strong, intelligent (though uneducated) woman's steps towards self-fulfilment" (Hurston vii). In generic terms, this latter definition would make Hurston's novel a Bildungsroman, a story of (self-)education by life.