Dictionary

bildungsroman en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˈbɪl.dʊŋzˌɹoʊ.mən/
• /ˈbɪl.dʊŋz.ɹoʊˌmɑːn/

Etymology

Borrowed from German Bildungsroman, from Bildung (“education, formation”) + -s- + Roman (“novel”).

Meanings

1. A novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character, usually from childhood to maturity.
   • English speakers are more hospitable to fiction in translation, and yet when was the last time you heard someone mention “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship” or “Elective Affinities,” Goethe’s long fictions? These books have a good claim to have founded two of the major genres of the modern novel—respectively, the Bildungsroman and the novel of adultery. 2016 January 25, Adam Kirsch, “What’s great about Goethe?”, in The New Yorker:
   • Goethe's honorific assignment to the vanguard of a uniquely German novelistic tradition of the bildungsroman simultaneously places him outside the mainstream of the development of the novel. 2020, Frederick Amrine, Goethe and the Myth of the Bildungsroman: Rethinking the Wilhelm Meister Novels, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 2:

Forms

Relateds

coming of age

Translations (16)

fi kehitysromaani (a type of novel) · es novela de formación (a type of novel) · ja ビルドゥングスロマーン (a type of novel) · cmn 教育小說 /教育小说 (a type of novel) · fr roman d'apprentissage (a type of novel) · vi bildungsroman (a type of novel) · fr bildungsroman (a type of novel) · hu fejlődésregény (a type of novel) · mr बिल्डुंग्जरोमान (a type of novel) · es novela de aprendizaje (a type of novel) · ja 教養小説 (a type of novel) · da dannelsesroman (a type of novel) · sv bildningsroman (a type of novel) · cmn 成長小説 /成长小说 (a type of novel) · cmn 教養小説 /教养小说 (a type of novel) · de Bildungsroman (a type of novel)