Journal articles on the topic 'English Bildungsromans'

Masande Ntshanga’s novel The Reactive (2014) is the first South African novel written by a black male writer to feature the first-personvoice of an HIV-positive man, Lindanathi. Following Kgebetli Moele’s The Book of the Dead (2009), which gave the virus itself a voice, The Reactive heralds a significant shift in the portrayal of HIV in South African literature. Eben Venter’s Afrikaans novel Ek Stamel, EkSterwe (1996) which was translated into English by Luke Stubbs as My Beautiful Death (2004), and which has – significantly – received little critical review in English as an HIV narrative, tells the story of a white South African man, Konstant, in the Australian diaspora whoeventually succumbs to AIDS. Both novels complicate ideas of masculinity and can be described as ‘coming of age’ narratives or bildungsromans. Both novels sit historically on the cusp of change, before and after the widespread availability of ARVs. Given theircommonality of subject and narrative perspective, these texts seem ripe for comparison despite their authors’ different backgrounds. The shifts and continuities in the representation of HIV/AIDS found between these two novels, published 18 years apart, seem to disrupt the trajectory of the post-colonial bildungsroman as it is mediated (for the first time?) through the HIVpositive narrator. Reading these two novels together helps us to understand literary patterns, associations and dissociations, which reveal a cultural symbology of HIV/AIDS, part of a wider cultural symbology of illness in South African literature.

In this article, we seek to articulate a genre theory-centered definition of girls’ literature, and interrogate its subgenre, the girl’s bildungsroman, as contextual, cultural sites of rhetoric regarding girls and girlhood. By exploring English-language North American girls’ literature, we identify it within a framework of genre as social action, tracing the protagonists’ maturation into the socially determined roles of wife and mother. We explore the ways in which the girl’s bildungsroman follows a home-away-home model, but with the end result of socially acceptable community integration, rather than the boy’s bildungsroman’s culmination in heroic independent identity via quests and adventures.

Franco Moretti argues that inherent in the Bildungsroman is a tension between youth as an energetic emblem of modernity and change, and adulthood, which signifies stoppage, stasis, and finality. However, Wordsworth’s Prelude complicates this binary, as the Romantic resistance to the adult order renders childhood and youth a dialectical image of rebellion, stasis, and finality. The Prelude has been read as a formation narrative that influenced the English Bildungsroman, yet Wordsworth’s representation of childhood within a frozen temporality indicates how the Prelude’s telos of progress and growth becomes a conflicted matter. The dialectic of growth that informs the work subverts the linearity of the story of development and at the same time produces anxiety about the difficulty to grow up. The topos of the child who does not grow up captures the inherent ambiguity surrounding the Bildung ideal, while the morbidity associated with this topos reveals the dark side of the idealization of childhood.

In this article, I examine how Dominican American author Angie Cruz’s novel Dominicana (2019) uses the bildungsroman genre to point to cross-cultural solidarity, or different communities working in tandem, to contest hegemonic discourse. Cruz’s take on a bildungsroman has an interesting inflection that juxtaposes learning and unlearning in two different societies (Dominican and American) where lessons do not inform each other. Because Cruz's main protagonist Ana’s sense of Self develops alongside her civic engagement, I argue that it is useful to think of Dominicana as a feminist bildungsroman. Along with her brother-in-law César, Ana searches for change through relationality and intercultural empathy as vehicles toward larger community engagement that shares a common plight. Due to her peripheral positionality as an undocumented, non-English-speaking Person of Color in 1960s New York, she finds a location of identity within an alternative community of African American and white protestors, whose intersection is of class and political beliefs. My goal is not to overlook or minimize differences between groups, differences that have, at times, been contentious, but rather to emphasize that Cruz’s sense of belonging is guided by increased engagement in alternative communities that share in her alienation. Utilizing a theoretical lens grounded in the works of Jill Toliver Richardson, Rita Felski, and Amy Cummins and Myra Infante-Sheridan, I conclude that for Cruz, intercultural empathy and alternative communities are viable paths toward resisting the American national community that presents itself as an unattainable model of assimilation.

AbstractThis article discusses how an increased focus on intertextuality may contribute to the development of reading skills among ESL/EFL student teachers. When we read literary texts, there is often an element of recognition and intertextuality involved. By working with what the students already know, we may facilitate the development of their aptitude for reading. The rationale for approaching literature in this way is to suggest answers to the underlying question: How can we work with literature in the classroom to make it worthwhile and stimulating for more students to read literary texts? A group of teacher training students of English and their teacher studied excerpts from an example novel, When Jays Fly to Bárbmo, and its intertexts. The data were collected through a single-case study of a teacher/researcher’s observation log and field notes of the teaching scheme and group discussions in class. The students saw how narrative formulas are repeated. For instance, the students identified the Bildungsroman – portraying a young character’s identity quest – as an important genre of children and young adults’ literature. The article argues that the identification of intertextual references will help them and serve as scaffolding in the reading process. An enhanced knowledge of such intertextual traits may facilitate the development of metacognitive strategies for reading. A raised awareness among the students about the phenomenon of intertextuality is important when developing strategies for reading narrative literary texts.Keywords: ESL/EFL in Teacher Training, reading novels, intertextuality, metacognition, When Jays Fly to BárbmoEn intertekstuell tilnærming til lærerstudenters lesing av engelskspråklig skjønnlitteraturSammendragDenne artikkelen diskuterer hvordan et større fokus på intertekstualitet kan bidra til utviklingen av leseferdigheter hos engelskstudentene i lærerutdanningen. Når vi leser litterære tekster, innebærer det ofte et element av gjenkjennelse og intertekstualitet. Ved å arbeide med det studentene allerede kjenner til, kan vi legge til rette for utvikling av deres leseferdigheter. Begrunnelsen for denne tilnærmingen til litteraturundervisningen er å søke svar på det underliggende spørsmålet: Hvordan arbeide med skjønnlitterære tekster i klasserommet slik at flere engelskstudenter oppfatter lesing som verdifullt og stimulerende. En engelskklasse i lærerutdanningen og læreren deres leste utdrag av en eksempelroman, When Jays Fly to Bárbmo, med vekt på intertekstuelle referanser. Datagrunnlaget for studien består av en enkel casestudie av lærerens/forskerens observasjonslogg, feltnotater fra selve undervisningsøkten og gruppediskusjonene som læreren/forskeren og studentene hadde. Studentene oppdaget hvordan narrative formler gjentas. De identifiserte Bildungsromanen, som omhandler en ung hovedpersons søken etter identitet, som en sentral sjanger i barne- og ungdomslitteraturen. Artikkelen argumenterer for at identifiseringen av intertekstuelle referanser vil hjelpe dem og tjene som stillas i leseprosessen. Mer kunnskap om intertekstuelle trekk ved tekster kan støtte utviklingen av metakognitive lesestrategier. En større bevissthet blant studenten om fenomenet intertekstualitet er viktig når man utvikler strategier for å lese narrative skjønnlitterære tekster.Nøkkelord: Faget engelsk i lærerutdanning, lesing av romaner, intertekstualitet, metakognisjon, When Jays Fly to Bárbmo

In October 1914, the English writer and publisher Douglas Goldring was invalided out of the British Army. By 1916, he had become a conscientious objector and moved to Ireland, where he lived for the next two years, witnessing the aftermath of the Easter Rising. Illuminating connections between the pacifist movement in Britain and Irish Republicanism, his writings of this period – including two Irish travelogues and a propagandist semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, The Fortune (1917) – disclose transnational and transcultural networks of resistance and dissidence, and show how the Rising and its aftermath helped to radicalise pacifist writers in London.

Abstract This paper examines narrative representations of authors and authorship in English-language fiction from the 1890s to the 1920s. From Henry James onwards, such narratives revise the basic, and by that time exhausted, plot elements of the novel of literary apprenticeship as featured in Dickens’s David Copperfield and Thackeray’s Pendennis, among many others. Instead of focusing on ideas of development and professional formation, they depict authors subdued by a sense of shrinking opportunities and lack of movement. Aging or dying authors in James and Mann, young but soon disappointed authors in Joyce, Forster, or Green: wherever we look, we find an ambivalence of promise that often ends in stagnation, failure, even death. In this context, my paper presents a close reading of three less frequently discussed modernist variations on the literary bildungsroman: Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams (1897/1907), E.M. Forster’s The Longest Journey (1907), and Henry Green’s Blindness (1926).

Šio straipsnio tikslas yra pristatyti naują naratyvinį žanrą – grafinį romaną (angl. graphic novel), kilusį iš komiksų tradicijų. Komiksų vieta Šiaurės Ameri­kos kultūroje paradoksali; nors jie nuo XX a. pra­džios spausdinami beveik visuose JAV ir Kanados laikraščiuose, nevertinami nei kaip menas, nei kaip literatūra. Tik paskutiniame XX a. dešimtmetyje li­teratūrologai atkreipė dėmesį į komiksus, kaip savitą naratyvinį žanrą: aiškinama, kad būtina analizuoti žodžių ir vaizdų sąryšį, kuris sukuria išskirtinę nara­tyvinę kalbą. Šią kalbą meistriškai naudoja grafinių romanų kūrėjai – pritaiko ją visai naujoms temoms. Pavyzdžiui, amerikiečio Arto Spiegelmano romanas Maus („Pelė“, išvertus iš vokiečių kalbos) pasako­ja apie žydų holokausto siaubą. Iš pirmo žvilgsnio atrodo beveik šventvagiška, kad autorius apie žydų kančias Aušvico lageryje pasakoja naudodamasis ži­noma komiksų „kalbančių gyvulių“ tradicija. Tačiau A. Spiegelmanas sugeba tragiškus įvykius perteikti ironišku komiksų stiliumi. Jo romane išryškinama antrosios kartos paveldėta kančia, kuri komplikuo­ja tėvo ir sūnaus santykius. 1992 m. romanas Mauspelnė autoriui prestižinę Amerikos „Pulitzer“ lite­ratūros premiją. Kitas amerikiečių grafinio romano kūrėjas Joe Sacco taip pat domisi istorinių katastrofų poveikiu paprastų žmonių gyvenimui. RomanasPa­lestinas vaizduoja autoriaus klaidžiojimą per palesti­niečių pabėgėlių gyvenvietes. Romano įtampa kyla iš autoriaus bendravimo su palestiniečiais – ironijos objektu dažniausiai tampa jis pats, naivus svečias iš turtingų Vakarų. Žinomiausi Kanados grafinio roma­no kūrėjai Chesteris Brownas ir Seth (rašytojo Gre­gory Gallanto slapyvardis) taip pat linkę naudoti au­tobiografinę medžiagą. C. Brownas romane Tu man niekad nepatikai (išleistas 2002 m.) galima įžvelgti bildungsromano bruožų. Pagrindinis herojus, kaip ir autorius, vardu Chesteris, augantis Monrealio prie­miestyje, turi tipiškų paauglystės rūpesčių. Tik vai­kino motinai staiga susirgus nervų liga, susidrumsčia ramus priemiesčio gyvenimas. Chesteris priverstas subręsti. Seth’o romane Geras gyvenimas, jei tik nepalūžti (išleistas 2003 m.) irgi autobiografinis; pa­grindinis herojus, kaip ir autorius, vardu Seth’as. Ro­mano veiksmas – Seth’o pastangos surasti žinių apie vieną jau seniai užmirštą Kanados karikatūrininką, su kuriuo Seth’as tapatinasi. Autorius nenori prisitai­kyti prie Šiaurės Amerikos polinkio greitai užmirš­ti praeitį, nevertinti jos kultūros. Grafinis romanas apskritai yra iššūkis literatūrologams, verčiantis juos ieškoti naujų teorijų ir metodologijų, pagal kurias būtų galima nagrinėti naują žanrą.

Language is a powerful weapon that expresses the culture of a given people. The study entitled: ‘Language and Tiv Cultural Practices in Adan-Wade Kohol Ga’ clearly looks at linguistic and cultural resources that Suemo Chia discusses in his novel. This study explores aspects of language and examines cultural elements in the novel under study. This study used Benjamin Lee Whorf’s Whorfian Hypothesis or Linguistic Relativity which was propounded in 1956. He theorised that the structure of our native language determines our perception or cosmology. Methodologically, this study used primary and documentary sources. The primary is Adan-Wade Kohol Ga and secondary sources are books, articles, dictionaries and theses. As for the data presentation, the researcher read, extracted relevant linguistic and cultural elements, transcribed and analysed. It has been discovered that Adan-Wade Kohol Ga is novel of growth – bildungsroman. It is also a historical novel that discusses Tiv traditional belief system. It has been found out that the novel under discussion has graphological, phonological, syntactic and semantic deviations. It has also been learnt that Tiv borrowed certain cultural practices from other tribes. The novel has linguistic and cultural archaisms. It has been recommended that the younger generation should study their indigenous literatures so as to understand the culture of their people. Young people should also learn their own languages; hence language defines individuals. Lecturers should recommend indigenous literatures to the students of Languages and Linguistics, Cultural Studies, Literature in English and English Language to read, analyse and translate.

This article explores the functions of secondary girl characters in English-language American and Canadian girls’ Bildungsromane. Previously, we have explored girls’ literature as a distinct genre, framed in the theory of genre as social action, and our past scholarship examines the ways in which pre-WWII girls’ Bildungsroman stories emphasize girls’ eventual integration into their communities. Rather than having adventures, as in boys’ coming-of-age texts, we have noted ways in which the main girl characters grow “down” into social restrictions, usually as (potential) wives and mothers. Secondary female characters in these girls’ stories are compared, contrasted, or conflated with their close peers as they grow to womanhood, whether they function as the protagonists' “bosom friend,” a rival or “frenemy,” a sibling, or a classmate. However, without the same coming-of-age expectations of a text’s or series’ heroine, these secondary female characters often demonstrate alternate paths to womanhood, highlighting diversities or serving as a warning to the girl protagonists on their journeys.

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English. 本文討論《黄金路》所反映中國近三十年經濟狀態的巨變，以及“經濟人”在社會變革中，在主體認知、倫理關係、情感追求上的種種追求、張力與結果。 This essay seeks to understand the recent social and cultural dynamics of China by means of reading Zhang Dapeng’s novel Golden Path. Zhang’s novel describes the economic boom in China since the eighties, and the resultant shakeup of ethical and affective relationships at different social levels. It is not merely a belated bildungsroman of a man in search of his identity in economic terms, but also a sarcastic critique of a socialist system turned upside down thank to the advancement of liberal desires.

This article studies the eugenic theories of Marathi sexological writer and novelist Narayan Sitaram Phadke, and his attempts to domesticate the modern ideal of the adult romantic couple as a yardstick of ‘emotional democracy’ in late colonial India. Locating Phadke's work against the backdrop of the Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929) and its eugenicist concerns, I argue that he conceptualized romantic love as an emotion and a form of sociability central to the state's biopolitical schemes of ensuring modern coupledom but as exceeding the state's capacity to rationally order Indian sex life. Consequently, he crafted literary supplements like the bildungsroman to circulate ‘English’ idioms of emotional and corporeal intimacy in Marathi; his novels domesticated eugenic sexology for its ‘vernacular’ audiences by advocating caste-bound romantic love as the blueprint for Indian marital coupling. As exemplified by Phadke's work, an emerging Marathi discourse of love demarcated a space for the young couple to operate as a vehicle of interpersonal openness within the constraints of the upper-caste joint family. By outlining the parameters of this Brahmanical aesthetic discourse, I show that the couple became the locus of a self-styled ‘democratic’ form of emotional attachment aimed at developing a necessary dynamism within endogamous caste-based marital arrangements without radically transforming them. The science performed through the Marathi novel in the 1920s and 1930s consequently explains the increasing prominence of romantic love as a form of developmental ‘democratic’ discourse at a time when both romantic love and democracy-in-practice were widely experienced as absent from Indian society.

Gilmore, Rachna. That Boy Red. Toronto: HarperTrophy, 2011. Print. That Boy Red by Canadian author Rachna Gilmore is an engaging, lightly humorous, episodic novel suitable for young readers ages 8 to 12. Set on a Prince Edward Island farm during the Great Depression, it tells the story of the MacRae family through the focal character of middle child Red, who is about the same age as the book's intended readers. Red is an excitable lad whose quick temper and jocularity often land him in trouble he later regrets. One immediately thinks of comparisons–Anne Shirley, Tom Sawyer, or Brian O'Connal in Who Has Seen the Wind–but the similarities only go so far. Red's unique quality is a moral compass (coupled with sensible familial guidance) that always steers him back to thoughtfulness and the tone of the book is lighter than some of these classics, being driven more by dialogue than poetic descriptions. The novel's six episodes are distributed throughout the seasons of a calendar year, and each one focuses on Red's relationship with a different family member, which provides Gilmore the opportunity to develop the family as a cast of rounded characters. Ellen, the eldest, is the teacher at the local school and lives with the family. Alex and Mac are Red's older brothers; Alex is away at college, while Mac is slightly older than Red and shares a good-natured rivalry with him. Lucy, or Bunch for short, is the youngest of the family. Other characters, such as Red's stern grandmother Cat-Less Granny, also make appearances.Red's parents are practical, hard working, and possessed of some remarkably effective parenting skills. Times are tough, but it is their steadfast ambition, indeed the family mission, to finance the advanced education of each child with the salary of an older sibling, as he or she gains well-paying employment: Ellen is paying Alex's college fees, Alex will pay Mac's fees, and so forth. The entire family has accepted this vision, but that doesn't mean Red finds school particularly motivating. For him school means enduring the taunts of other boys and studying when he would rather be tinkering in the woodshop. Ultimately, though, he comes to understand the value of education, and this is nicely figured in the final episode when Red goes up in an aeroplane. From a high vantage point, he senses instinctively the freedom of the sky, the connections between places near and far, and the way this new perspective sets him apart from others in the astonished community not brave enough to take the plunge with him. Red's ride in the sky tells us that he will eventually leave his home, but the story itself remains firmly grounded in the locales of the farm and surrounding community, which we see through the varying seasons: the swimming hole in summer, and the snow drifts on the railway tracks in winter. Much of the action involves dashing or trudging along the paths that cross the back lots of neighboring farms or riding to town to meet the train. Overlaid on these comings and goings are the routines of rural life: evening chores, family meals, and church on Sunday. These will not be the most riveting of plot events for readers looking for whizz-bang action, but they serve as a kind of rhythm for the larger story that pulls the reader along. Gilmore's language matches the scale of events in the narrative: direct, with occasional colourful turns of phrase, but not bombastic. The humour does not jump out and surprise the reader, but it serves as a kind of protective blanket that envelopes everything–even serious matters like accidents–and recalls the sense one has as a child, while still absolved of adult responsibilities, that, somehow, things will turn out all right. Gilmore neatly represents the states of mind of a young person who senses the machinations of the adult world without understanding them. In this Bildungsroman, Red begins to encounter the responsibilities of adult life at the same time that he discovers the special place his family has given him. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: John HuckJohn Huck is a metadata and cataloguing librarian at the University of Alberta. He holds an undergraduate degree in English literature and maintains a special interest in the spoken word. He is also a classical musician and has sung semi-professionally for many years.