Makale Özeti:
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In English literature, the Bildungsroman, or the novel of
formation, emerged as one of the most popular literary types of fiction
among Victorian realists and many of the most important works of
realism are Bildungsromane. But the Bildungsroman did not emerge
suddenly on literary scene in the Victorian Age. The present study relies
on the assumption, supported by Bakhtin, that the Bildungsroman has its
own history of development as a distinct category, form, type, or
subgenre of the novelistic genre, which is in itself a long, complex, and
interesting process of rise and consolidation of a literary pattern, tradition,
and literary system. This process can be summarized as follows: from the
ancient epic and novel to medieval romances to Renaissance picaresque
fiction (continued in the seventeenth century) to (in English literature) the
eighteenth-century rise of the English novel with its strong picaresque
substratum and through romanticism and Goethe (accredited with having
introduced in fiction the element of Bildung) to the Victorian flourishing
of the novel of formation following Carlyle’s moment of a threefold
literary reception of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. These are the main
conventions which nurture the rise of the Bildungsroman as a subgenre
from ancient beginnings to romanticism. Among the primary influences
on the rise of the Bildungsroman, some belong, like romantic writings and
Goethe’s canonical Bildungsroman, to the level of “allusion”. Others, like
picaresque tradition and certain eighteenth-century English novels, belong
to the level of “intertextuality”. The present article aims to disclose by its
comparative and thematological perspectives of approach a number of
experiences and aspects of literary practice whose diachronic unfolding
should be considered in a study on the development history of the
Bildungsroman.
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