Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman

The Bildungsroman is a genre novel whose territory is well traveled, that of a young and often alienated hero on the cusp of maturity, intent on discovering who he or she is and being true to that identity. The German word "Bildung" refers to forming and shaping, and the first Bildungsromane in 18th-century Germany focused on the hero's self-formation. Modernists such as Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf adopted and reinvigorated the Bildungsroman form as a means of telling stories about longing and transition. With this first major study of the historical context of the English and Irish Bildungsroman, Gregory Castle revisits the genre with a special interest in self-development and identity, as well as the viability of the classical concept of Bildung in the modernist era.

Author: Gregory Castle
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Published: 05/15/2015
Pages: 340
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.19lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.79d
ISBN13: 9780813061351
ISBN10: 0813061350
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Semiotics & Theory
- Drama | European | General

About the Author
Gregory Castle is associate professor of English at Arizona State University. He is the author of Modernism and the Celtic Revival (2001) and the editor of Postcolonial Discourses: An Anthology (2001).