Random Literary Bleg Of the Day
Being in need, it appears, of having my heart broken, I just read (for the first time, shocklingly) V. S. Naipaul’s classic, A House For Mr. Biswas. And in talking with a friend about the novel, I realized that I didn’t know the technical term for the form of a fictional narrative that traces the entire life of the principal character, of which Biswas is a sterling example. Anyone out there able to enlighten me? Anyone? Alan?
Bildungsroman. Pretty sure.
— JA · Jun 24, 04:04 PM · #
No, a bildungsroman is a novel of character formation. It doesn’t cover the entire arc of a life from birth to death. At least, I don’t think it does.
— Noah Millman · Jun 24, 04:32 PM · #
As Noah says, the Bildungsroman treats a person’s life from childhood or adolescence to maturity, not a whole life. I’m not aware that there is a term that describes the kind of book Noah is talking about — Lebensroman perhaps, though that’s never used in English and has (I think) a different meaning in German. . . .
— Alan Jacobs · Jun 24, 05:54 PM · #
From what I remember, Bildungsroman does, in fact, cover that type of novel, at least as a genus designator.
A quick check on the online Literary Encyclopedia, here, seems to back up my memory. Research on wikipedia also suggests a sub-category of Bildungsroman, Entwicklungsroman (development-novel), but I had never heard of that before.
Other than that, I’m pooped. Maybe we need a neologism?
— JA · Jun 24, 05:54 PM · #
Well, there you go: photo-finish.
After researching a little more, I found this:
The Bildungsroman is subcategorized into very specific types of the genre, most often found in German literature. There is the Entwicklungsroman, which can be defined as “a chronicle of a young man’s general growth rather than his specific quest for self-culture” (Buckley 13). In other words, a story recounting a man’s life rather than focusing on the inner changes that contribute to his maturity.
Still not entirely satisfactory, I suppose.
Now that I think about it, one could write an interesting paper fleshing out how A House For Mr. Biswas fits under the bildungsroman genre by redrawing its boundaries.
— JA · Jun 24, 06:15 PM · #
Then A Bend in the River is a bildungsroman, compare and contrast would seem to be the assignment.
— Sanjay · Jun 24, 06:29 PM · #
Heh; as Ferdinand might observe about this thread:
“[It’s] all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. [It’s] being killed. Nothing has any meaning…I began to think I wanted to be a child again, to forget books.”
Apologies, Noah. I’ll desist now.
— JA · Jun 24, 06:43 PM · #
Bildungs-und-takings-apart-roman.
— Wrongshore · Jun 24, 09:44 PM · #
Fictional biography? It’s not Germanic, though.
— Jason B. Jones · Jun 25, 01:28 AM · #