On a Possible Definition of the Bildungsroman
Keywords:
Bildung, developmental novel, character as mental construction, generic competence, historicityAbstract
There are two disadvantages to using the term Bildungsroman. On the one hand, none of the works traditionally considered Bildungsromane really fit the concept of a harmonious integration of the individual into society. On the other hand, this is a label that, in recent decades, seems to apply to practically any cultural product featuring a teenager as the protagonist. Here, we will try to overcome these two extreme positions by delimiting what we prefer to call the Bildungs/Anti-Bildungsroman system in relation to the broader macro-genre of the developmental novel. The assumption for this is that in the first case, a generic competence of a more specialised reader is activated and it is this that allows the recipient to link the given work to its hypotext, J. W. Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister. This dependence on a fundamental work, which only a certain type of recipient is in a position to recognise, is thus elevated, along with the premise of the historicity and “Germanness” of the “system”, to a central criterion.
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