Formative fictions nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman

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...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Boes, Tobias
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press, Cornell University Library 2012, 20122012
Series:Signale : modern German letters, cultures, and thought
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: JSTOR Open Access Books - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary: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
Physical Description:1 online resource
ISBN:0801478030
9780801478031
0801465214
9780801451775
0801451779
0801465656