01661--Bildungsroman

Bildungsroman is a kind of novel that follows the development of the hero or heroine from childhood or adolescence into adulthood, through a troubled quest for identity. The term ('formation-novel') comes from Germany, where Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-6) set the pattern for later Bildungsromane. Many outstanding novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries follow this pattern of personal growth: Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-50), for example. When the novel describes the formation of a young artist, as in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), it may also be called a kunstlerroman.