The Bildungsroman Genre Essay -- Literature Bildungsroman Essays

The Bildungsroman Genre INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................. 1- BILDUNGSROMAN NOVELS......................................................................................... 2- TWO BILDUNGSROMAN NOVELS............................................................................. 3.1- Great Expectations..................................................................................................... 3.2- Emma........................................................................................................................... CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................. BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................................................. A novel is a prose narrative of a certain length and complexity that deals imaginatively with human experience usually through a connected sequence of events. Most novels involve many characters and tell a complex story by placing the characters in a number of different situations. One theme commonly present in British novels is the theme of â€Å"growing up†. Even before psychology was well developed as an academic field, the bildungsroman novels, or education novels explored people’s emotions and the process of maturing. The bildungsroman is a class of novel that arouse in German literature but later became a worldwide genre. It deals with the theme of someone’s growth as a person from childhood to maturity. The relevance of such a genre is clear if one notices that much of the most significant fiction in the last two centuries has taken this form and, therefore, constitute part of the history of the novel in the world. Great Expectations (1860-1861), written by the English author Charles Dickens, and Emma (1926), by another English author, Jane Austen, can be analysed under this perspective. Througout Dickens’ novel, Pip, the main character, goes through many changes in his personality to eventually coming to terms with his own actions. Austen’s novel deals with a female character, Emma, a rich young woman who learns how to balance power and propriety. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these two novels as pertaining to the bildungsroman genre and how a... ...sroman in English: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism. 1. Ed. New York: MLA, 1990. HADER, Suzanne. The bildungsroman Genre: Great Expectations, Aurora Leigh, and Waterland. Captured on November 5, 2000. Online. Availabe at http://classiclit.about.com/arts/classiclit/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm LANDOW, Georger P. Austen, Dickens, and Male-Female Relations. Captured on November 4, 2000. Available at http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/dickens/ge/ gubar/html MINNIS, Julie. Victorian England: Background to Great Expectations . Captured on November 4, 2000. Available at http://humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/index.html. PHILLIPS, Brian Great Expectations. Captured on November 4, 2000. Available at http://www.sparknotes. com/lit/greatex SHELSTON, Alan. Charles Dickens. . Captured on November 4, 2000. Available at http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/CD-Shelston.html The Atlantic Monthly. Captured on November 5, 2000. Daily. On line. Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/classrev/greatexp.htm WEISSMAN, Gary. Parents in Austen and Dickens. Captured on November 4, 2000. Available at http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/dickens/ge/parents.html