Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English Bildungsromans'

Thesis (MA (English))--University of Stellenbosch, 2009.
ENGLISH ABTRACT: In recent years, original and exciting developments have been taking place in Nigerian literature. This new body of literature, collectively referred to as the ―third generation‖, has lately received international acclaim. In this emergent literature, the negotiation of a new, contemporary identity has become a central focus. At the same time, recent Nigerian literary texts are articulating responses to various developments in the Nigerian nation: Nigeria‘s current political and socio-economic situation, diverse forms of cultural hybridisation, as well as an increasing trans-national consciousness, to mention only a few. Three 21st-century novels – Chimamanda Nogzi Adichie‘s Purple Hibiscus (2004), Sefi Atta‘s Everything Good Will Come (2004) and Chris Abani‘s GraceLand (2005) – reveal how new avenues of identity-negotiation and formation are being explored in various contemporary Nigerian situations. This study tracks the ways in which the Bildungsroman, the novel of self-development, serves as a vehicle through which this new identity is articulated. Concurrently, this study also grapples with the ways in which the articulation and negotiation of this new identity reshapes the conventions of the classical Bildungsroman genre, thereby establishing a unique and contemporary Nigerian Bildungsroman for the 21st century. The identity that is being negotiated by the third generation is multi-layered and inclusive, as opposed to the exclusive and unitary identities which are observable in Nigerian novels of the previous two generations. Such inclusivity, as well as the hybrid environments in which this identity is being negotiated, results in a form of ―identity layering‖. Thus, the individual comes into being at the point of intersection, overlap and collision of various modes of self-making. Such ―layering‖ allows the individual, albeit not without challenge, to perform a self-styled identity, which does not necessarily conform to the dictates of society. At the same time, the identity is negotiated by means of an engagement, in the form of intertextual dialoguing, with Nigeria‘s preceding literary generations. The most prominent arenas in which this new identity is negotiated include silenced domestic spaces, religo-cultural traditions, constructs of gender and nation, as well as in multicultural and hybrid communities. The investigation conducted in this thesis will, consequently, also focus on such areas of Nigerian life, as they are portrayed in the focal texts. Various theories of literary analysis (some of which specifically focus on Nigeria), Bildungsroman theory, theories of allegory, (imaginative) nation formation, feminism, gender and performativity, as well as theories of cultural identity and cultural exchanges, will form the critical and theoretical framework within which this investigation will be executed. Chapter One explores how Purple Hibiscus‘s protagonist, Kambili Achike, negotiates her gender identity and voice in order to constitute herself as an independent, self-authoring individual. Chapter Two, which focuses on Everything Good Will Come, investigates the dialectic relationship between Enitan Taiwo‘s national and personal identity, which inevitably leads to her quest to reconceive her gender identity, since national identity, as she finds out, is always an engendered construct. In its analysis of GraceLand, Chapter Three turns to the difficulties that Elvis Oke faces when he attempts to negotiate an alternative masculine identity within a rigid patriarchal system and between the cracks of a fraudulent African modernity.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: In die afgelope paar jaar was daar opwindende, oorspronklike ontwikkelinge in Nigeriese literatuur. Hierdie nuwe literatuurkorpus, wat gesamentlik bekend staan as die ―derde generasie, het onlangs internasionale erkenning ontvang. In hierdie opkomende literatuur, kry die soeke na 'n nuwe, kontemporêre identiteit ‘n sentrale fokus. Terselfdertyd reageer onlangse Nigeriese literêre werke met verskeie ontwikkelinge in die Negeriese nasie: Nigerië se huidige politieke en sosio-ekonomiese situasie, diverse vorme van kultuurverbastering asook 'n toenemende trans-nasionale bewustheid, om maar ‘n paar te noem. Drie 21ste eeuse romans – Chimamanda Nogzi Adichie se Purple Hibiscus (2004), Sefi Atta se Everything Good Will Come (2004) en Chris Abani se GraceLand (2005) – onthul hoe nuwe kanale van identiteidsonderhandeling en –vorming in verskeie kontemporêre Nigeriese situasies ondersoek word. Hierdie studie ondersoek die maniere waarop die Bildungsroman, die roman van selfontwikkeling, as ‗n medium dien waardeur hierdie nuwe identiteit geartikuleer word. Terselfdertyd sal hierdie studie ook worstel met die maniere waarin die artikulasie en soeke na hierdie nuwe identiteit die konvensies van die klassieke Bildungsroman genre hervorm, en daardeur 'n unieke en kontemporêre Nigeriese Bildungsroman vir die 21ste eeu vestig. Die identiteit wat ontwikkel deur die derde generasie is veelvlakkig en inklusief en staan teenoor die eksklusiewe, eenvormige identiteite wat in Nigeriese romans van die vorige twee generasies opgemerk word. Hierdie inklusiwiteit, sowel as die hibriede omgewings waarin hierdie identeite ontwikkel word, lei tot die vorming van identiteitslae. Die individu kom dus tot stand by die kruising, oorvleueling en botsing van verskillende metodes van selfvorming. Hierdie vorming van lae laat die individu toe, alhoewel nie sonder uitdagings nie, om 'n selfgevormde identiteit te hê wat nie noodwndig aan die eise van die gemeenskap voldoen nie. Terselfdertyd word hierdie identiteit onderhandel deur ‗n skakeling met Nigerië se voorafgaande literêre generasies in die vorm van intertekstuele dialoog. Die mees prominente omgewings waar hierdie nuwe identiteit onderhandel word, sluit stilgemaakte huishoudelike spasies, religieus-kulturele tradisies, konstrukte van gender en nasie, sowel as multi-kulturele en hibriede gemeenskappe in. Die ondersoek wat in hierdie tesis uitgevoer sal word, sal daarom ook fokus op hierdie areas van Nigeriese lewe, soos deur die fokale tekste voorgestel. Verskeie teorieë van literêre analise (sommige wat spesifiek op Nigerië fokus), Bildungsromanteorie, teorieë van allegorie, (denkbeeldige) nasievorming, feminisme, gender en performatiwiteit, sowel as teorieë van kultuuridentiteit en -uitruiling, vorm die kritiese en teoretiese raamwerk waarbinne hierdie ondersoek uitgevoer sal word. Hoofstuk een ondersoek hoe Purple Hibiscus se protagonist, Kambili Achike, haar genderidentiteit onderhandel en uitdrukking gee om haarself as onafhanklike, self-skeppende individu te vorm. Hoofstuk twee, wat fokus op Everything Good Will Come, ondersoek die dialektiese verhouding tussen Enitan Taiwo se nasionale en persoonlike identiteit, wat onvermydelik lei tot die herbedenking van haar genderidentiteit, aangesien nasionale identiteit, soos sy uitvind, altyd 'n gekweekte konstruk is. In sy analise van GraceLand, draai Hoofstuk drie om die moeilikhede wat Elvis Oke in die gesig staar wanneer hy probeer om ‘n alternatiewe manlike identiteit te onderhandel in 'n rigiede patriargale sisteem tussen krake van 'n bedrieglike Afrika-moderniteit.

My thesis examines the ways in which the critical structure of modern Irish Bildungsroman deconstructs and re-examines ‘residues of past trauma’ in the form of socio-cultural, psychological, personal and notably political artefacts present in the nation’s unfortunate engagement with the State’s politics of formation. The result is a resistant and radical form which challenges the classical and modern specificity of the genre by introducing a non-conformist, post-Joycean protagonist, whose antithetical perception of history and socio-cultural norms contradicts the conservative efforts of the post-independence Irish State. To examine such a resistant critical structure, this thesis focuses on Roddy Doyle’s A Star Called Henry (1999), Dermot Bolger’s The Woman’s Daughter (1987), William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), Seamus Deane’s Reading In The Dark (1996), Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy (1992), Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls (1960) and A Pagan Place (1970), Nuala O’Faolain’s Are You Somebody? (1996), Francis Stuart’s Black List, Section H (1971), Flann O’Brien’s The Hard Life (1961), and John McGahern’s The Dark (1965). The selected novels provide an invaluable insight into the nation’s perception of sensitive concepts such as modernism and modern Irish identity, and how the confluence of these two produced a critical dialectical discourse which chronicles the formation of a non-conformist, ahistorical modern protagonist. To achieve a historical relevance, this thesis starts by examining Doyle’s fictionalization of 1916 Easter Rising and the chaotic 1920s; Bolger’s exploration of a repressive, inward-looking post-independence Irish society in the 1930s and the 1940s; Trevor’s engagement with a socio-political divide that further split the nation; Deane’s autogenous reading of an internal neocolonial ‘Othering’ during the ‘emergency’; McCabe’s illustration of the State’s architecture of oppression, and societal introversion from the early 1940s to the 1960s; Edna O’Brien’s and Nuala O’Faolain’s exemplary illustration of women’s blighted sexual Bildung in the 1940s, 50s and 60s; and finally examining a radical, ‘chronocentric’ depiction of a socio-political divide fictionalized by Stuart and McGahern, which emerged during the early days of the State and continued to dominate the nation well into the 1960s and the early 1970s. By examining psycho-social, sexual and political traumata reflected in the modern Irish Bildungsroman, this thesis provides a dialectical reading of the gap that appeared between the revolutionary ethos of independent Irish identity formation, rooted in the principles of 1916 Rising and the 1920s, and that which appeared in the form of a tolerant republicanism in the 1980s. To study this socio-historical gap, I examine the nation’s criticism of the State’s politics and structure of formation, manifested in narratives of individual and national formation. The modern Irish Bildungsroman, I argue, appropriates the traditional features of the genre, for instance, chronicling the individual’s psychosocial formation and the potential to re-engage with their society, and produces a critical matrix for a dialectical discourse which enables the nation to voice their concerns vis-à-vis a politically dichotomous post-independence Irish society, a repressed history, and at the same time to externalize their perception of modern Irish formation, being founded on an anti-colonial, non-conservative and politically aware consciousness. The result, which I call the ‘Meta-National Narrative of Formation,’ is a historically resistant and socio-politically conscious narrative which finds independence in rejection, imposition, and deformation, namely, by defying the State’s architecture of formation as well as their nativist, retrograde visions of Irish identity.

In this dissertation I intervene in and challenge already-existing critical studies of Virginia Woolf's The Waves (1931) that focus on ideas of imperialism, empire and subject-making practices in the novel by arguing for a revisionist reading of The Waves as a Bildungsroman. Unlike the Bildungsroman of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, which utilised standard novelistic conventions to explore the relation between form and reality, I contend that The Waves is a thoroughly modernist reinvention of the Bildungsroman form designed to capture a rapidly industrialising and modernising English society. To capture the socio-political unrest in twentieth-century England at this time, Woolf deviates from the convention of a single-protagonist narration, using multiple perspectives to expose the contradictions in processes of self-formation, especially with regard to the relation between the self, nation and national identity. The correspondence between self, nation and national identity is explored through the silent seventh character, Percival, who I argue is characterised as a hero in the medieval romance tradition to expose the romantic and heroic fictional narratives that provided the framework for ideas of empire and imperialism, then at the core of nationhood and national identity in England. Conversely I argue that the character who narrates a third of the novel's narrative, Bernard, provides us with an alternative to empire and imperialism in subject-making practices. I argue that in the final section of The Waves Bernard deviates from the direct-speech narrative of preceding sections of the novel and engages the reader directly. The reader is thus alerted not only to his or her role as a reader, but also to Bernard's overarching role as primary protagonist in the novel. The reader has progressed alongside Bernard through the narrative in keeping with the genre designation of the Bildungsroman which encourages the progression of the reader alongside the progression of the primary protagonist. The reader is further encouraged in his or her progression by an aesthetic education present in the music and poetry that Woolf incorporates not only in the content, but in the very structure of the text. Two of the novel's characters, Louis and Neville, use poetry to locate their subjectivities within larger historical narratives, while Beethoven's String Quartet No. 13 in B♭ major, Opus 130, informs the structure of the text, contributing to the interactive sonic and non-sonic landscape that actively invites the participation of the reader. The reader's participation in the novel is most fully realised when Bernard addresses the reader directly in the final section of The Waves. This interaction explains and thus concretises Woolf's overarching critiques of empire and imperialism in the novel alongside her proposed methods - which directly oppose the ideology of imperialism - for developing a subjectivity formed in relation to the common, and the individual experience of the common as a historically and materially determined phenomenon. The common in this sense is a community of 'common reading subjects', who like Woolf are not formally educated, but develop a subjectivity through reading premised on an equality of intelligence which enables them to engage critically with, order and make sense of the society and politics of their surrounding world. In this way, I show that Woolf challenges the already existing subject-making practices in twentieth-century England by exposing the contradictions - the exclusion of the marginalised, the poor and women - in ideas of Englishness. She proposes an alternative form of subject-making that is as diverse as her reading public and premised on a non-exclusionary acknowledgement of an equality of intelligence that defies class, gender and social boundaries.

This thesis explores the relevance of the Bildungsroman genre to a selection of Northern Irish writing from the 1960s through to the late 1990s. Synthesizing a range of critical approaches it shows how six novels by Leitch, Duffaud, Patterson, Deane, Madden and Molloy challenge the traditional Bildungsroman. It brings the thwarted Bildungsroman into correspondence with the key elements of ‘minority discourse’ as defined by Mohamed and Lloyd (1990), focusing on subjectivity and identity position. Using Jameson’s concept of the ‘political unconscious’ the thesis demonstrates how fragmented and hybridised subjectivities challenge the two main Northern Irish identarian discourses, Irish nationalism and Ulster unionism. It argues that all six counter-Bildungsromane feature some of the characteristics of ‘minority discourse’ with one even providing an example of ‘minor writing’ as defined by Deleuze and Guattari (1975).

This thesis has two aims. The first one is to elucidate how Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) functions as a Bildungsroman, and the other one is to demonstrate how the novel also has a coming of age aspect based on feminism. Whilst Alice matures in the traditional sense, she also in parallel does so as a stronger female fighting for gender rights with signs of feminism. The feminist angle as well as the surreal world of Wonderland makes the novel a not very obvious Bildungsroman in a genre dominated by male protagonists. For Alice to be a young female child who ends up in a fantasy world thus makes her a very fascinating character. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that what Alice is exposed to and reacts to in Wonderland generally reflects the genre of a Bildungsroman and also specifically a feminist Bildungsroman. Theoretical framework is based on the ideas of Franco Moretti, Mikhail Bakhtin, Thomas Jeffers, Carol Lazzaro-Weis, George Eliot and Elizabeth Drew Stoddard, as well as novels by Eliot and Stoddard. This includes dynamic protagonists, unpredictable development, symbols of modernity, the quest for universality, and minor characters who make sure that the protagonist develops, as well as feminist struggle by means of disregarding the ‘cult of true womanhood’ in a genre and society dominated by men.

Estudar a África sob uma perspectiva que diverge dos discursos imperialistas e colonialistas é contemplar sua pluralidade e caracterizações de forma a construir uma leitura mais coerente dos modos de vida e de sobrevivência dos habitantes daquele continente; é possibilitar uma compreensão alternativa sobre contextos pré-coloniais, coloniais e pós-coloniais e sobre as consequências das empreitadas Europeias naqueles cenários. Pensando no escopo da Nigéria, país considerado nesta investigação, tal perspectiva pode elucidar como a ação das forças inglesas no período colonial e pós-colonial enfraqueceram conceitos de identidade, autonomia e sociedade, bem como a importância de heranças étnicas e culturais. Por outro lado, está, também, atenta para questões como as disputas internas entre as maiorias étnicas, a saber, os grupos Ioruba, Igbo, Haussá e Fula, e as minorias, como é o caso da etnia Ogoni, localizadas no Delta do Níger, região de farta concentração de petróleo e palco, por conseguinte, de intensos conflitos territoriais. Esta dissertação evidencia, a partir da análise do romance Sozaboy: a novel in rotten English, do escritor nigeriano Ken Saro Wiwa, e de extensa pesquisa bibliográfica, o caos provocado pela guerra em uma dessas problemáticas regiões nigerianas e o processo de desalienação pelo qual passam seus habitantes, metaforizados na comunidade de Dukana e, mais especificamente, no personagem Mene, o Sozaboy. Tem-se neste cenário, uma desalienação que, em realidade, é sintomática do próprio autor, haja vista as profundas correspondências entre ele e o protagonista do texto. O trabalho demonstra de que forma problemas como a corrupção, a falência da liderança estatal, a ganância pelo poder e o desprezo pela identidade autóctone colaboraram para a dizimação ambiental, humana e social de Dukana; ao mesmo tempo em que propiciaram o amadurecimento do jovem Mene, num processo que considero próprio do Bildungsroman. Assim, o trabalho conta com uma metodologia que relaciona literatura e história da África, especialmente da Nigéria, e emprega a categoria genérica do Bildunsroman a fim de acentuar tanto o processo de desalienação e maturação do personagem principal como a estrutura antiguerra do texto.
Studying Africa from a perspective that diverges from imperialist and colonialist discourses amounts to contemplating its plurality and characterizations so as to build a more coherent reading of its inhabitants’ modes of living; it also amounts to engage in an alternative understanding of its precolonial, colonial and postcolonial contexts and of the consequences of the European enterperises on the continent. As related to Nigeria, the country considered in this investigation, such perspective can elucidate how the action of English forces during the colonial and postcolonial period weakend concepts of identity, autonomy and society, as well as of the importance of ethnic and cultural heritages. On the other hand, it is also alert to questions such as the internal disputes between ethnic majorities, namely, the Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba, and Fula, and minorities, as is the case of the Ogoni people, who live in the Niger Delta, an oil-prolific and conflict-stricken region. Through the analisis of Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy: a novel in rotten English and by recourse to extensive bibliographical research, this dissertation evinces the chaos caused by war in one of those problematic Nigerian regions as well as the process of disalienation undergone by its inhabitants, metaphorically represented by Dukana and the novel’s protagonist, Mene, or Sozaboy. The work demonstrates the ways in which problems such as corruption, failure of State leadership, greed for power and contempt for one’s own indigenous identity collaborate to the environmental, human and social decimation of Dukana; at the same time that they propiciate the maturation of Mene in a process that I consider akin to Bildungsroman as a genre. The work thus rely on a methodology that relates African literature and history, especially Nigerian history, and employs the generic category of the Bildungsroman in order to emphasize both the main character’s process of disalienation and the novel’s anti-war structure.

Young adult novels are undeniably popular and yet they are simultaneously dismissed as inconsequential or light – conventionally deemed low literature, these novels are generally not considered worthy to be discussed in the same spaces as the less popular, more traditional high literature. If a genre of young adult novels were given a place within literary history, it would not only legitimize these novels as more than guilty pleasures or the provinces of adolescent readers who will come to grow out of them, but it would also open up the possibility for other forms of literature to be similarly recognized as worth reading or thinking about. The Bildungsroman, also known as the “novel of formation” or the more colloquial “coming-of-age” novel, is a genre grounded in the traditions of multiple literary histories and is commonly understood to be high literature. Marianne Hirsch models the European Bildungsroman, which is useful for both American novels due to the predominance of European and particularly English canon. This paper is interested in determining how contemporary young adult dystopian novels, examined through the Scott Westerfeld's Uglies and Veronica Roth's Divergent, both work within and depart from the conventions of the traditional Bildungsroman.

The Emancipation of Celie: The Color Purple as a womanist Bildungsroman

The purpose of this essay is to study The Color Purple as a Bildungsroman, focusing on the development of the protagonist, Celie. The Color Purple is related to both the traditional Bildungsroman and to the female Bildungsroman, but the essay shows that it can also be seen as a womanist Bildungsroman. Initially, Celie believes that being a woman inescapably means that she has to serve and obey men and she is oppressed by patriarchy. She is eventually introduced to another way of living by the strong female characters of Sofia and Shug who embrace her in a kind of sisterhood, which is vital for Celie as she has nothing else to help her liberate herself from the patriarchal values that keep her down. In conclusion, this essay shows how Celie has developed from being a young girl, forced to act in an adult way, into a woman who displays signs of all the criteria for having achieved a womanist development: she is grown up (not just acting as though she is), she is in charge of a business, a house and, in short, her life. She is serious, she has a universalist perspective, and most importantly, she loves. Furthermore, the essay highlights which characteristics of her development can be linked to the traditional and the female Bildungsroman and which characteristics can be seen as typical of a womanist Bildungsroman.

In this essay the main aim is to consider Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials with its female protagonist as a Bildungsroman. The principal source of the study is Jerome Buckley’s Season of Youth – The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Buckely’s presentation of the significant characteristics of the Bildungsroman will be applied to Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials in order to explore if these characteristics are present, modified or not, in the trilogy.   The second aim is to investigate how His Dark Materials relates to the patterns of the hero’s journey. In order to approach this question, Joseph Campbell’s work The Hero with a Thousand Faces is applied as a main source.    Since most material concerning both the Bildungsroman and the hero’s journey are from a male point of view and concern males, the female perspective will be represented by Susan Fraiman and Linda Wagner who both write about females and the bildung narrative.   In the section called The Story of Lyra, the trilogy is summarized briefly in order to give the reader a chance to understand what the trilogy is about. In the conclusion, Lyra’s development and (hero)-journey are discussed.     The final claim of the study is that His Dark Materials can be considered a Bildungsroman and the patterns of the hero journey are found in the story about Lyra, but with some differences from her male counterparts.

This thesis is a study of rebellious child protagonists in Victorian bildungsroman. It discusses five novels ??? Jane Eyre, The Mill on the Floss, What Maisie Knew, Vanity Fair and Kim ??? that feature ???radical child??? protagonists who use indirect methods of narrative control to resist conservative models of character development. It argues that these novels form a subset of subversive English bildungsromane, which threaten the genre???s traditionally liberal values. Theories of narrative desire, reader seduction and discursive manipulation are used to reveal how the radical child in the Victorian bildungsroman takes command of the reader???s sympathy and gains power over the realist text, despite its physical and social powerlessness. Especially important is the presence of a fantasy counterplot, which coexists with, and ultimately undermines, the bildungsroman???s realistic surface narrative of successful socialisation. The counterplot allows radical child protagonists to develop in a non-linear manner that contradicts bourgeois ideals of stable progress. Focusing instead on sites of rupture between the individual and society, subversive bildungsromane resist both the dialectical model of character, which aims to harmoniously unite the protagonist with the realist world, and the dialogic model of interaction, which requires the restriction of personal liberty for the common good. This rebellious child in the Victorian bildungsroman thus represents an assault on the genre???s democratic ideals. Rejecting compromise, the radical child replaces the bildungsroman???s central ethic of interpersonal responsibility with an individualistic ethic of domination. Indeed, the thesis argues that the appeal of such child protagonistslies in their rejection of the obligatory, but anticlimactic, exchange of freedom for security that underpins the realist bildungsroman???s social contract, a rejection attractive to the reader precisely because it is unrealisable in reality. Finally, the thesis compares this radical child with the Gothic monster. While the monster is punished for its subversion, the radical child???s counterplot enables it to enact most of its subversive desires unpunished. The conservative English bildungsroman thus becomes a more effective way of representing asocial energies than the more obviously radical Gothic genre, which openly displays its anti-democratic sentiments.

My goal with this dissertation was to discover more about how the Bildungsroman genre in English or the coming-of-age story became a staple of post-colonial and ethnic minority writing. I grew up reading novels like these and feel a great deal of affection for them, and I wanted to understand how authors writing in these other traditions represented a broader response to colonialist Western culture. My method was to survey philosophical approaches to subjectivity and subject-formation, read a wide variety of texts I understood as engaging with the Bildung tradition, and examining how they represented subject-formation. While I originally saw the appropriation of the genre as a revolutionary act that fundamentally changed the nature of the Bildungsroman, I found that the Bildungsroman contained a germ of this oppositional, in Theodor Adorno’s terminology non-identical, subjectivity throughout its existence as a type in English literature. The opposition of writers of Bildung to heteronormative, racist, and sexist discourse is what brought out this non-identical strain more forcefully and ultimately culminated in contemporary manifestations of the Bildungsroman that reject essentialism and understand subjectivity as strategic, hyphenated, and positioned against a centered, stable identity. The positive significance of studying these texts as featuring a de-centering literary subject is that it demonstrates how this mode of writing, including a future anterior narrator that reflects on his or her past experiences as usable material for fashioning a durable and adaptive self, empowers subjects to exert greater control over their own self-fashioning. Students learn empathy and agency from witnessing the struggles of these protagonists to tell their stories.

English
Ph.D.
Growing Cold: Postwar American Women Writers and the Novel of Development, 1945-1960, examines how women writers developed, negotiated, and struggled with representing adolescent girl selfhood in the novel of development – also termed the Bildungsroman – during the early postwar era. By examining four women’s Bildungsromans written between 1946-1960 – Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding (1946), Jean Stafford’s The Mountain Lion (1947), Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman (1951), and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) – I show that postwar women writers were actively shaping the genre in a way that would fundamentally shift how adolescent girlhood would be represented in second wave feminist and contemporary female Bildungsromans. By 1960, adolescent girls in women’s literature were far different from where they began in 1945: they were younger, more sexual, and more psychologically complex than the adolescent girl characters earlier in the 20th century. Yet these novels are also racially and sexually problematic, advancing white heteronormative identity at the expense of queer and racially othered characters. In this way, these writers suggest that postwar adolescent development is a process of "growing cold"; it is a process of loss, emptiness, and violence, leading to emotional and social isolation. This project therefore intervenes in postwar American literary studies and women's studies by raising awareness of the importance that postwar women writing played in the development of the contemporary Bildungsroman.
Temple University--Theses

This dissertation assesses rage and its utility for fictional Black girls and adolescents in asserting their humanity, accessing their voices, and developing strategies of resistance that contribute to their identity formation. Through analyses of six novels: 1) God Bless the Child, 2) Breath, Eyes, Memory, 3) The Hate U Give, 4) The Bluest Eye, 5) Daddy Was a Number Runner, and 6) The Poet X, this research presents rage as a canonical theme in Black women’s coming-of-age narratives and presents connections between rage, rights, and resistance. The connections, revealed through stimuli and adaptations associated with rage, frame an argument for North Americas as an arbiter of anger. The novels construct an “arc of anger” that places them in conversation about Black girl rage and presents a tradition of Black women crafting Black girl protagonists who are conduits for counternarratives of rage. This dissertation also examines how history, memory, and culture contribute to Black girls’ frustrations and knowledge bases. By looking to works published between the angry decade (the 1960s) and the age of rage (the 2010s), the research presents ways Black women novelists and their characters return to rage to combat social institutions and critique social constructions of Black girlhood and womanhood.

This essay presents a literary analysis of the autobiography Educated (2018) by Tara Westover. The analysis examines to what extent Westover’s story conforms and subverts the genre conventions of the Bildungsroman and the autobiography. An overview of the genre constitutions is therefore provided. In addition, the essay focuses on the use of the autobiography in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. Besides creating an arena for critical discussion and reflection in the Swedish upper secondary school, the autobiography may also encourage students to share their own stories. The findings show that Educated both conforms to and subverts the Bildungsroman genre. It is concluded that Westover’s autobiography challenges traditional genre conventions and may serve as a valuable tool in the EFL classroom.

The predominant focus on the male protagonist in the Bildungsroman genre has provoked feminist critics to offer a re-definition of the genre, claiming that the female protagonist's development differs in significant ways from the traditionally expected course of development (i.e. male). A feminist comparison between A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man and Martha Quest found, unexpectedly, that the female protagonist follows the traditional Bildungsroman trajectory in several respects, whereas the male protagonist deviates from it. A Portrait emphasizes the themes of childhood, formal education and religion, while in Martha Quest the themes of family relations, informal education, sexuality and marriage are treated at length. Martha Quest as an example of a female Bildungsroman deals specifically with the issues of role models, gender roles and gender inequality, which neither the traditional Bildungsroman nor A Portrait does.

Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees (2002) tells the story of a motherless fourteen-year-old Lily Owens, raised by a cruel father, who desperately searches for clues to unlock her mother’s past. Kidd’s bildungsroman reveals the incredible power of black women, particularly a group of beekeeping sisters and a black Mary, to create a safe haven where Lily can examine her fragmented life and develop psychologically, finally becoming a self-actualized young lady. Lily’s matriarchal world of influence both compares and contrasts with the patriarchal world represented in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, exposing the matriarchy’s aptly structured ways of providing a more healing environment than is Huck Finn’s. Kidd’s novel also showcases the stylistic strategies of first person narrative point of view, language, dialect, and the motif of place in order to contextualize the social awareness and psychological development Lily gains through her journey.

Il presente elaborato si propone di esplorare la tradizione del romanzo di formazione caraibico considerando il genere del romanzo di formazione, le sue caratteristiche, la sua storia, e individuando le peculiarità che il genere ha sviluppato all'interno della tradizione post-coloniale, soprattutto nel contesto caraibico di lingua inglese. Il primo capitolo stabilisce cosa si intenda con “romanzo di formazione caraibico” e introduce i dodici romanzi selezionati per questo studio. La tesi quindi procede identificando quattro argomenti principali, o macro temi, a ciascuno dei quali è dedicato un capitolo, e confrontando il modo in cui questi vengono sviluppati nei diversi romanzi. I temi sono: la scuola e l’istruzione, la cultura e la storia, la politica, la partenza. La tesi si chiude con una breve riflessione sul tema del ritorno.
The present study aims to explore the Caribbean Bildungsroman tradition by considering the Bildungsroman genre, its features, and history, and by pointing out the peculiarities that the genre developed within the postcolonial tradition and specifically in the anglophone Caribbean context. The first chapter establishes what is meant by “Caribbean Bildungsroman” and introduces the twelve novels selected for this study. The study then proceeds by identifying four main topics, or macro themes, each developed in a separate chapter, and by comparing the way such themes are dealt with in each of the novels. The themes are: school and education, culture and history, politics, departure. The study closes on a brief reflection on the possibility of return.

My thesis proposes a theory of relational identity development in Chicana literature. Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera offers an interpretation of Chicana identity that is largely based on historical models and mythology, which many scholars have found useful in interpreting Chicana literature. However, I contend that another text, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, not only illustrates the need for an alternative paradigm for considering identity development, but in fact offers such an alternative. I argue that Cisneros shows a model for relational identity development, wherein the individual develops in the context of her community and is not determined solely by elements of myth or genealogy. In questioning the historical paradigm of identity development, I examine three key aspects associated with Chicana identity development: gender, home, and language. Employing the theories of Édouard Glissant, I discuss how individual identity development is better understood in terms of relationships and experience rather than historical models. For Chicanas, the roles of women have largely been interpreted as predetermined, set by the mythic figures La Malinche and La Virgen de Guadalupe. However, Cisneros's work shows that this historical tradition is less fruitful in understanding identity than recognizing individuals' experience in context of their relationships. With this communal understanding established, I question the common associations of home and Chicana identity. I argue that Cisneros challenges our very concept of home as she engages and counters the notions of theorist Gaston Bachelard. The idea of a house is metaphorical, becoming a space of communal belonging rather than a physical structure to separate individuals. Finally, I consider how both spoken and written language contribute to relational identity development. I argue that Cisneros's use of language demonstrates that not only does language provide the means for development within a community, but also the means for creation within that society. The theoretical implications of such a relational identity construct are not only an expansion of what is entailed in Chicana identity, but an invitation for broadening the community of theoretical discussion surrounding Chicana literature.

Cheung Fung-Ling.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2003.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-112).
Abstracts in English and Chinese.
Abstract --- p.i
Acknowledgements --- p.v
Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter Chapter Two --- Passionate Impulses in Childhood and Adolescence --- p.26
Chapter Chapter Three --- Moral Dilemmas in Love --- p.52
Chapter Chapter Four --- The Ultimate Return --- p.75
Chapter Chapter Five --- Conclusion --- p.99
Notes --- p.104
Bibliography --- p.106

My study examines three female Black British bildungsromane: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight, and Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen. By combining a study of a relatively established novel form with contemporary female diasporic fictions, my work looks at how gender, race and location complicate the tropes of the genre, while still adhering to many of its parameters. I explore ways in which the existential states of loneliness, isolation, and solitude faced by the female protagonists in England assist or inhibit the formation of collectivity and subjectivity. This study pays particular attention to ways that community formation and friendship, as well as work and affective labor, serve as means to find/create a sense of home in diasporic conditions, as in Brick Lane and Second-Class Citizen. I also study how a sense of community falters because of a disconnection from productive work in Waiting in the Twilight.
Department of English

Dissertação de Mestrado em Estudos Ingleses apresentada à Universidade Aberta
Uma introdução que dá a conhecer o background literário de Jeanette Winterson introduz os tópicos e as teorias que subjazem à argumentação desenvolvida ao longo da dissertação. A anti-linearidade, a intertextualidade, o Pós-Modernismo ou a construção da identidade constituem vectores centrais na abordagem às obras da autora. A crítica literária parece responder em uníssono à questão que pretende categorizar a obra literária da autora. O Pós-Modernismo é uma estética recorrentemente associada a Winterson, nomeadamente pela exploração de questões que instauram a incerteza quanto a verdades universais, desconstruindo a ideia pré-concebida de ordem, jogando com expectativas, contextos, formas, associações e estruturas (supostamente) estáveis – narrativa; estilo; facto/ficção; história/literatura; tempo e espaço, ou género. Partindo de um pressuposto de que um texto não é constituído por uma unidade hermética e linear, mas que comunica com outros textos (no seu sentido mais lato) tal parece constituir a base de criação textual de Winterson, impondo, assim, toda uma dinâmica de análise dialógica/intertextual. Neste sentido, procurarei demonstrar como é que a intertextualidade e uma narrativa anti-linear lhe permitem desafiar convenções literárias, sublinhando a forma como legitimam a produção de sentidos e a definição de uma ou de várias identidades. Tentarei igualmente evidenciar de que modo a autora se apropria das tradições literárias masculinas para centralizar discursos marginais e promover a sua arte
Résumé- Une introduction qui nous donne à connaître le background littéraire de Jeanette Winterson introduit les sujets et les théories qui sous-tendent à l’argumentation développée tout au long de la dissertation. L’anti-linéarité, l’intertextualité, le Post-modernisme ou la construction de l’identité constituent les vecteurs principaux de l’étude des oeuvres de cet auteur. La critique littéraire semble répondre à unisson à la question qui prétend catégoriser l’oeuvre littéraire de cet auteur. Le post-modernisme est une esthétique habituellement associée à Winterson, nommément au travers de l’exploration des questions qui instaurent l’incertitude quant aux vérités universelles, détruisant l’idée reçue de l’ordre, jouant avec les attentes, contextes, formes, associations et structures (soi-disant) stables – narration; style; fait/fiction; histoire/littérature; temps et espace, ou genre. Partant du principe qu’un texte n’est pas construit à partir d’une unité hermétique et linéaire, mais qui communique avec d’autres textes (au sens large), tel semble constituer la base de la création textuelle de Winterson, imposant, ainsi, toute une dynamique d’analyse dialogique/intertextuelle. Je me propose donc de démontrer dans quelle mesure l’intertextualité et une narrative anti-linéaire lui permette de défier les conventions littéraires, soulignant la manière dont on légitime la production de sens et la définition de une ou plusieurs identités. Je tenterai également de mettre en évidence de quelle manière l’auteur s’approprie des traditions littéraires masculines afin de centraliser des discours marginaux et de promouvoir son art.
Abstract- An introduction establishing Jeanette Winterson’s literary background opens the debate of the main topics, as well as of the theories underlying the approaches developed along the chapters’ approaches; among them there are anti-linearity, intertextuality, postmodernism or the construction of an identity. Literary criticism seems to agree on the way of categorising the author’s work; postmodernism is commonly associated to Winterson’s writing, especially when issues establishing the uncertainty concerning universal truths are under analysis, deconstructing the traditional idea of order and playing with expectations, contexts, shapes, associations and structures supposedly stable – plot; style; fact/fiction; history/literature; time and space; or gender. Starting with the assumed idea that a text is not a linear and hermetic object, but that it communicates with other texts instead in the broadest sense, it seems to be the foreground of Winterson’s artistic creation, thus establishing a new dialogic/intertextual analysis dynamic. From this perspective I will try to demonstrate how intertextuality and an anti-linear narrative serve her purpose of challenging literary conventions, highlighting the way they allow the production of meanings and the definition of one or several identities. I will also undertake the task of showing how she appropriates what is regarded as masculine literary traditions in order to centralize marginal discourses and promote her art

A Romantic Bildung: The Development of Coming-of-Age Novels in the Romantic Period (1782-1817) explore la naissance et le développement du roman de formation en Europe à l’époque romantique. Celle-ci est le témoin de nombreuses discussions sur les Droits de l’homme et de la montée du nationalisme en Europe. Au même moment, la littérature se transforme pour laisser plus de place à la subjectivité du personnage. Tout cela donne naissance à un nouveau genre littéraire : le Bildungsroman, ou roman de formation et d’éducation. Contrairement à la définition actuelle du genre, le Bildungsroman est transnational, c’est-à-dire qu’il ne provient pas exclusivement d’Allemagne, mais de partout en Europe. A Romantic Bildung se penche donc sur le sujet en analysant de façon thématique la trame narrative de Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle (1788), Mansfield Park (1814), Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since (1814), Emma (1815), ainsi que d’Ormond, a Tale (1817) et sur leur appartenance au roman de l’époque romantique. En comparant les étapes d’éducation, d’indépendance, et de retour à la société des protagonistes, ces romans font ressortir les similitudes qui caractérisent le Bildungsroman.
A Romantic Bildung: The Development of Coming-of-Age Novels in the Romantic Period (1782-1817) explores the birth and development of the Bildungsroman during the Romantic period. The latter is characterized by the numerous discourses on the Rights of men as well as the rise of nationalism. At the same time, Romantic writers transform literature by increasing the protagonist’s subjectivity and in turns, create a new genre of narrative: the Bildungsroman, in which the protagonist’s development and growth is the main focus. Contrary to current definition of the genre, the Bildungsroman—or coming-of-age novel—is a transnational product: it is obviously found in Germany, but also in France, England, Ireland, and Scotland, to name a few, during the Romantic period. Through a thematic analysis of Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle (1788), Mansfield Park (1814), Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since (1814), Emma (1815), and Ormond, A Tale (1815), A Romantic Bildung traces the narrative structure of the genre and it locates its essence in the Romantic novel. By comparing the narrative’s steps of education, independence, and return to society, the characteristics of the genre are revealed.

Children of Globalization: Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels in Germany, England, and the United States is an exploration of contemporary Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels written in the context of globalized and de facto multicultural societies. Framed in the long tradition of Bildungsroman studies, this study illuminates the structural transformations that the coming-of-age genre has undergone in contemporary diasporic communities. Children of Globalization analyzes the complex identity formation of first- and subsequent-generation migrant protagonists in globalized rural and urban environments and dissects the implications that these diasporic formative processes have for the tercentennial genre. While the most traditional iteration of the Bildungsroman genre follows male middle-class heroes who forge their identities in a process of complex introspection to become citizens and workers, contemporary Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels represent formative processes that fit into, resist, or even disregard, narratives of nationhood. Recent changes in the global genre are the direct consequence of the intricacies of the formative processes of culturally-hybrid protagonists who must negotiate their access into adulthood and citizenship, and puzzle over sexuality and gender identity, in host societies that at times regard them with contempt and distrust. The study spans three centuries as it traces both perennial and volatile elements of the genre through its contemporary state. In doing so, it identifies thematic and structural seeds which, planted through the centuries in varied locations, have bloomed into nuanced explorations of the self in an interconnected world where regional and national definitions of identity are increasingly contested and in flux.

In order to contextualize the genre and provide evidence of its enduring malleability, the study begins in Germany, tracing what I term Proto-Bildungsromane, long medieval narrative poems that follow the formative processes of knights and heroes in grandiose style. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s thirteenth-century poem Parzival and the coeval Gottfried von Straßburg’s Die Geschichte der Liebe von Tristan und Isolde ponder the development of the self but too heavily rely on destiny to be considered Bildungsromane. Still in Germany, I illustrate the fundamental characteristics of the genre in Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. In order to showcase the flexibility of the genre, I analyze its early transformations in England in prominent works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and E. M. Forster. The last four chapters focus on the exciting development of Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels in England, the United States, and Germany. Despite the stark differences between these societies and the particular cultural wealth of diasporic groups that have migrated there, the Diasporic Coming-of-age Novel has enabled sophisticated explorations of identity and belonging in all three countries. As the chapter summaries show, contemporary writers have used the Diasporic Coming-of-age Novel to untangle complicated formative processes, understand the expectations of their social environments, and achieve different levels of belonging and maturity.

With Children of Globalization, I seek to deepen our understanding of the exciting influence that contemporary diasporic movements have on the coming-of-age genre in particular and literary studies in general. Additionally, it is my hope that the exploration of Diasporic Coming-of-age Novels contributes to a capacious understanding of the important role of literature in the study of migration.