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.