The Bildungsroman: Investigation and Creation

Program year: 1995/1996Digitized from print original stored in HDRI began this creative project with two main goals in mind. I first planned to lay the intellectual framework for the fiction that I would write by reading books that were recognized as part of the bildungsroman genre. I then hoped to write some short fiction that incorporated several story-telling elements that I had determined were common to the bildungsroman genre. I read such novels as Sons and Lovers, by D. H. Lawrence, Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, and The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath, in order to get a better idea of what sort of elements were consistently present in the literary genre of the bildungsroman. The bildungsroman, or "novel of education," often deals with a young character's "coming of age," in which he learns about himself through his experiences with the world. Traditional experiences in these "coming of age" stories include travel, sexual encounters, and a rejection of religious and other values that the character has inherited from his parents and other authority figures. Using such experiences as these as my model, I began to write. After. discarding the first 25 pages that I wrote and beginning again, I eventually arrived at two stories dealing with a main character, Arthur, and his relationship with his brother, Jake. These stories occur at very different points in Arthur's life. One is centered around Arthur when he is 10 or 11, the other story takes place when Arthur is 18. I have tried to incorporate such elements as travel, discussion of religious and philosophical beliefs, and sexual experiences within these two stories. Even though I am not completely satisfied with the technical elements of the two stories, I am relatively satisfied that I have written fiction that can be correctly classified as a bildungsroman