The English Bildungsroman Essay -- Literature Essays Literary Criticis

The English Bildungsro homo The novel has a strong tradition in English literature. In big Britain, it can trace its roots natural covering to Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe in 1719 (Kroll 23). Since then, the British novel has gr suffer in best-selling(predicate)ity. It was especi eachy popular in Victorian England. The type of novel that was particularly popular in Victorian England was the novel of youth. Many authors of the time were producing works focused on the journey from childhood to adulthood Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre, George Eliot wrote The Mill on the Floss, and Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield and Great Expectations. All of these novels trace the growth of a child. In this respect, some of the nigh popular novels of the nineteenth century were part of the genre called the Bildungsroman. In the simplest signified of the word, a Bildungsroman is a novel of the development of a young man (or in some cases a young woman). In fact, the Websters College Dictionary comment of Bildungsroman is a novel dealing with the education and development of its protagonist. The Bildungsroman as a genre has its roots in Germany. Jerome Buckley notes that the word itself is German, with Bildung having a novelty of connotations portrait, picture, shaping and formation, all of which give the sense of development or creative activity (the development of the child can also be seen as the origination of the man) (13-14). Roman simply means novel. The term Bildungsroman emerged as a comment of Goethes novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. This was the first Bildungsroman, having been published between 1794 and 1796 (Buckley 9). The word lehrjahre can be translated as apprenticeship (Buckley 10). Apprenticeship has many connotations, mos... ...sroman. It is these differences precisely that make each novel its own story. After all, even though every persons story is different, they must all go through st long times of development in order to reach matu reness and find their personal niche within the larger world. The basic rule of the Bildungsroman is universal and especially appropriate to the growing world of the Victorian age where the kind of opportunities presented to the hero of the Bildungsroman echoed the actual experiences of those growing up in that era. industrial plant Cited Bildungsroman. Websters College Dictionary. New York Random House, 1996. Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. Season of Youth The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Cambridge Harvard UP, 1974. Kroll, Richard. Defoe and Early Narrative. capital of South Carolina History of the British Novel. Ed. John Richetti. New York Columbia UP, 1994.