The Nineteenth-Century Bildungsroman

Catalog description

This course will offer an introduction to the nineteenth-century Bildungsroman, a genre that focuses on the coming of age of a young and idealistic protagonist. We will analyse the concept of the individual, the learning processes and the modes of socialization in several nineteenth-century masterpieces: Stendhal?s The Red and the Black,Dickens?s David Copperfield, Balzac?s Lost Illusions, Dostoevsky?s The Adolescent and other works. Special attention will be paid to the national, political, and economic contexts.