សាកលវិទ្យាល័យ ប៊ែលធី អន្តរជាតិ

World Wide E-Library

Book Cover

Read PDF
Article By JSTOR

Formative Fictions

Author

Boes, Tobias

Year

2012

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Type

BOOK

Category

Literary Criticism

Language

English

Pages

214

ISBN

978-0-80146-565-9

Link

Last Update

09-Sep-2024

Keywords

LITERARY CRITICISM / European / German

Description

The Bildungsroman, or "novel of formation," has long led a paradoxical life within literary studies, having been construed both as a peculiarly German genre, a marker of that country's cultural difference from Western Europe, and as a universal expression of modernity. In Formative Fictions, Tobias Boes argues that the dual status of the Bildungsroman renders this novelistic form an elegant way to negotiate the diverging critical discourses surrounding national and world literature. Since the late eighteenth century, authors have employed the story of a protagonist's journey into maturity as a powerful tool with which to facilitate the creation of national communities among their readers. Such attempts always stumble over what Boes calls "cosmopolitan remainders," identity claims that resist nationalism's aim for closure in the normative regime of the nation-state. These cosmopolitan remainders are responsible for the curiously hesitant endings of so many novels of formation. In Formative Fictions, Boes presents readings of a number of novels-Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Karl Leberecht Immermann's The Epigones, Gustav Freytag's Debit and Credit, Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus among them-that have always been felt to be particularly "German" and compares them with novels by such authors as George Eliot and James Joyce to show that what seem to be markers of national particularity can productively be read as topics of world literature.

Related

See More
Image Description

Climate Change, Radical Uncertainty and Hope

Climate Change, Radical Uncertainty and Hope
Image Description

Exploring the Addition of Physician Identifiers to the California Hospital Discharge Data Set

Exploring the Addition of Physician Identifiers to the California Hospital Discharge Data Set
Image Description

Gelingensbedingungen pädagogischer Integrationsförderung
Image Description

City Regions and Devolution in the UK

City Regions and Devolution in the UK
Image Description

Einfluss des Verfassungsrechts und des internationalen Rechts auf die Ausgestaltung der sozialen Sicherheit in Ungarn

Einfluss des Verfassungsrechts und des internationalen Rechts auf die Ausgestaltung der sozialen Sicherheit in Ungarn
Image Description

Expectations Unfulfilled: Norwegian Migrants in Latin America, 1820-1940