Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: 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.
Author: Martín Ignacio Koval
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4407357601