Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online

Get access

Bildungsroman
(721 words)

The basic model of the early modern Bildungsroman was “the biography of a young protagonist … , which runs through a sequence of errors and disappointments to reconciliation with the world” [3. 35]. But even the few literary scholars who consider the Bildungsroman an independent genre cannot avoid problematizing it from the outset. The Bildungsroman usually appears “hesitant and ironic,” but it is “a necessary element of a Bildung narrative as a goal or at least as a postulate” [3. 35]. This alternation between supraindividual or even national pretensions and insufficien…

Cite this page
Albert, Claudia, “Bildungsroman”, in: Encyclopedia of Early Modern History Online, Editors of the English edition: Graeme Dunphy, Andrew Gow. Original German Edition: Enzyklopädie der Neuzeit. Im Auftrag des Kulturwissenschaftlichen Instituts (Essen) und in Verbindung mit den Fachherausgebern herausgegeben von Friedrich Jaeger. Copyright © J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag GmbH 2005–2012. Consulted online on 19 March 2024 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2352-0272_emho_SIM_017661>
First published online: 2015
First print edition: 20160907



▲   Back to top   ▲