SOURCE: “The Novel and the Individual: The Significance of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister in the Debate about the Bildungsroman,” in Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, edited by James Hardin, University of South Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 69-96.

In the following essay, Steinecke considers Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as a seminal Bildungsroman and studies its presentation of the hero's struggle to reconcile himself with reality.

If one were to list the most important texts in the history of the novel of the nineteenth century, one work would clearly stand out as the one most frequently mentioned and discussed: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.¹ This novel is pivotal in the development of the genre in Germany. This fact was seen from the very beginning in critical discussions; dozens of monographs and hundreds of articles deal with the development and meaning of the type of novel that uses Goethe's work as model and for...