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3 unusual facts about bildungsroman


Johann Karl Simon Morgenstern

In William Goldman's novel The Princess Bride the fictional author S. Morgenstern is almost certainly a nod to Morgenstern's coining of the term Bildungsroman, as the novel is representative of the genre.

Karl Weintraub

Weintraub noted that 18th- and 19th-century autobiographical writers often used a narrative of "development" in their stories, as distinct from earlier autobiographies' use of a narrative of "unfolding".

Towards a Sociology of the Novel

#Bildungsroman: This type of novel usually ends with a “self-imposed limitation” as the hero gives up his search for authentic values.


Carlos Luis Fallas

As an author he is best known for his novels Mamita Yunai (1940), which denounced the harsh condition endured by workers for the United Fruit Company and which is referenced in Pablo Neruda's Canto General, and for Marcos Ramírez (1952), a humorous bildungsroman about the life of a Costa Rican boy in the early 20th century, taken largely from Fallas's own life.

Cities in Flight

A Life for the Stars (1962) is a bildungsroman describing the adventures of a sixteen-year-old farm boy Chris, co-opted into an Earth city (Scranton, Pennsylvania) which has begun travelling in space.

Nicholasa Mohr

#Bildungsroman Written by Puerto Rican Women in the United States: Nicholasa Mohr's Nilda: A Novel and Esmeralda Santiago's When I Was Puerto Rican By: Muñiz, Ismael; Atenea, 1999 June; 19 (1-2): 79-101.

The Crow Road

This Bildungsroman is set in the fictional Argyll town of Gallanach (by its description, reminiscent of Oban but on the north east shore of Loch Crinan), the real village of Lochgair, and in Glasgow where Prentice McHoan lives.


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