Bildungsroman | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 28 pages of analysis & critique of Bildungsroman.

Bildungsroman | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 28 pages of analysis & critique of Bildungsroman.
This section contains 7,623 words
(approx. 26 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Marianne Hirsch

SOURCE: Hirsch, Marianne. “The Novel of Formation as Genre: Between Great Expectations and Lost Illusions.” Genre 12, no. 3 (fall 1979): 293-311.

In the following essay, first delivered as a lecture in 1975, Hirsch considers the Bildungsroman a European literary genre rather than a strictly German one, and outlines the differences between German Bildungsromane and those of France and England.

If the Bildungsroman has been considered a primarily German genre, it has been for reasons that are extra-literary in nature. The Bildungsroman expresses, theorists starting with Wilhelm Dilthey have argued, the individualism and interest in self-cultivation valued by German culture.1 In contrast, as Thomas Mann points out in a 1923 lecture, the public and political orientation of Western Europe (France and England) has produced the panoramic novel of social criticism.2 Such claims, true as they might be, obscure significant formal and thematic links among such important novels as Stendhal's Le Rouge et le...

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This section contains 7,623 words
(approx. 26 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Marianne Hirsch
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Critical Essay by Marianne Hirsch from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.