Description
Book SynopsisThe Bildungsroman, or novel of formation, has long led a paradoxical life within literary studies, having been construed both as a peculiarly German genre, a marker of that country''s cultural difference from Western Europe, and as a universal expression of modernity. In Formative Fictions, Tobias Boes argues that the dual status of the Bildungsroman renders this novelistic form an elegant way to negotiate the diverging critical discourses surrounding national and world literature.
Since the late eighteenth century, authors have employed the story of a protagonist''s journey into maturity as a powerful tool with which to facilitate the creation of national communities among their readers. Such attempts always stumble over what Boes calls cosmopolitan remainders, identity claims that resist nationalism''s aim for closure in the normative regime of the nation-state. These cosmopolitan remainders are responsible for the curiously hesitant endings of so many novels of formation.
Trade Review
By reinserting less well-studied German examples into a history of the genre, Boes resists turning plots into theoretical self-descriptions. His approach allows the genre the freedom of its individual solutions.... Boes remains true to the incipient insight that he has unearthed in Morgenstern.
-- Nicholas Dames * Modern Language Quarterly *
...Boes handles many and difficult relevant bodies of thought, both historical and theoretical... with exemplary clarity, writing in fluent and precise academic prose free of unnecessary jargon. What is more, he situates his work as a whole lucidly and creatively between the disciplines of German Studies and comparative literature, thereby enriching both of them and striking a blow for the ability of literary study to refresh itself at a time when the humanities are in sore need of the kind of inventiveness and confidence in them that Boes displays.
-- Michael Minden * Modern Language Review *
Table of ContentsIntroductionPart I. Methodological Background1. The Limits of National Form: Normativity and Performativity in Bildungsroman Criticism2. Apprenticeship of the Novel: Goethe and the Invention of HistoryPart II. Comparative Studies3. Epigonal Consciousness: Stendhal, Immermann, and the "Problem of Generations" around 18304. Long-Distance Fantasies: Freytag, Eliot, and National Literature in the Age of Empire5. Urban Vernaculars: Joyce, Döblin, and the "Individuating Rhythm" of ModernityConclusion: Apocalipsis cum figuris: Thomas Mann and the Bildungsroman at the Ends of TimeBibliography
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