bil·dungs·ro·man

or Bil·dungs·ro·man (bĭl′do͝ongz-rō-män′, -do͝ongks-)

A novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.

[German : Bildung, formation (from Middle High German bildunge, from Old High German bildunga, from bilidōn, to shape, from bilōdi, form, shape) + Roman, novel (from French, a story in the vernacular, novel; see roman).]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Bildungsroman

(ˈbɪldʊŋsromaːn)

(Literary & Literary Critical Terms) a novel concerned with a person's formative years and development

[literally: education novel]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Bil•dungs•ro•man

(ˈbɪl dʊŋz roʊˌmɑn, -dʊŋks-)

n.

a novel dealing with the maturation of its protagonist.

[1905–10; < German]

bildungsroman

A German word meaning education novel, used to mean a novel about a person’s formative experiences.

Mentioned in

literature

References in periodicals archive

Lukacs on the roots of the nineteenth century Bildungsroman in a

THE NAKED AND THE DEAD: LOST ILLUSION AND PESSIMISM IN THE FRANCOPHILE MAILER

Damascus House is a knockout as a late-blooming bildungsroman, which follows one young woman's desire to return to an innocence she's never known, and to find a sober mind and a genuine faith that she can call her own.

Damascus House

The author describes the role of the polit, a socially marginal character the world acts upon, and a variation on the Spanish picaro, as the quintessential protagonist in Jewish modernist literature, as well as its relationship to the picaresque and the Bildungsroman. She focuses on three types of the polit figure: the mobile modern subject, the demobilized soldier, and the new Soviet citizen, discussing narratives of mobility in terms of geography and social mobility in works by Sholem Aleichem and Issac Bashevis Singer; demobilization as a trope for post-Haskalah Jewish existence in I.J.

Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque

Growing Up in an Inhospitable World: Female Bildungsroman in Spain.

Of gender and genre: building woman with the Bildungsroman

It was evident that the Bildungsroman developed as a genre in the air of German idealism and in relation to the same philosophical concerns that informed the Humboldtian university.

Preface to the special section "Michael A. Peters and educational leadership"

Some of these new African narratives--especially the debut novels--often exhibit traits associated with the Bildungsroman, a form which evolved from Germany and became popular in most Western countries in the nineteenth century.

Negotiating growth in turbulent-scapes: violence, secrecy and growth in Goretti Kyomuhendo's Secrets No More

Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman. Helena Feder (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014) viii + 179pp.

Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman

The Bildungsroman remains one of the most remarkable contributions that German cultural arts have made to the ever growing vocabulary of international literary studies.

Rescinding Orthodoxy, resuscitating the mother tongue: daughter tongue interferes in African female narratives

A painful, tender, very funny bildungsroman void of sentimentality, Bronsky's book captures contemporary European adolescence in one delicious swoop.

Just Call Me Superhero

John Kinsella, Morpheus: A Bildungsroman, BlazeVOX Books, 2013.

News of previous contributors

The familiar ethnic Bildungsroman takes on a satisfying twist in Carrianne Leung's debut novel, The Wondrous Woo.

The Wondrous Woo