Formative Fictions ─ Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman

Boes (German, U. of Notre Dame) offers a stimulating analysis of the bildungsroman genre that departs from what he considers the traditional interpretation of "the protagonist's fulfillment in a national ideal." Instead he draws on Karl Morgenstern's lecture on the novel of formation to advance a "'performative understanding of Bildung," one which "moves discussions of the genre away from the realm of phantoms, specters, and fictional personalities, and toward a consideration of what narratives actually does, namely offer a coherent account of events as they exist in time." To this end, he argues that bildungsroman and the broader concept of bildung are both responses to the rise of historicism and its promise of a radically different relationship to time, change, and identity. He reads from mostly 18th and 19th century German works, including Wilhelm Meister's Apprentice, The Red and the Black, The Epigones, Debit and Credit, Doctor Faustus, but also non-German and non-European novelists who are in similar ways responding to changing sensibilities regarding time and national identity. To this end, he argues that the bildungsroman is a genre of world literature rather than a national one. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)