Bildungs/Anti-Bildungsroman System for Specialists: Fighting a Postmodern Temptation

Abstract

This paper starts from the statement of a double drawback surrounding the use of the term “Bildungsroman”. On the one hand, none of the works traditionally considered Bildungsromane really fits the conception of a harmonious integration of the individual into society. On the other hand, it is a label that, in recent decades, seems to apply to almost any cultural product with an adolescent as its protagonist. Here we will seek to overcome these two extreme positions by delimiting what we prefer to call the Bildungs/Anti-Bildungsroman system with respect to the more comprehensive macrogenre of the developmental novel. The assumption for doing so is that in the first case a generic competence of a more specialised reader is activated and that this is what enables the receiver to link the given work with its hypotext, J. W. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. This dependence on a foundational work, which only a certain type of recipient is in a position to recognise, is thus elevated, together with the premise of the historicity and “Germanness” of the “system”, to a central criterion.