New Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman

New Perspectives on the European Bildungsroman reflects the change in direction of research on the Bildungsroman, focusing on more psychological, authorial and feminist contents. Departing from the father of the prototype of the genre, Goethe, the authors trace imperative pathways to its French, British, and Italian counterparts, examining spiritual and female Bildungsromane. A wide-ranging analysis provides fresh insights into the genre through comparative analyses of Bildungsromane both diatopically and diachronically, while critical analysis of novels such as Voltaire's Candide, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, Collodi's Pinocchio, Aleramo's Una donna present new readings of the characters, plots and purposes of the most famous European novels.

Introduction \Part I. Spirituality Giovanna Summerfield\1. Mastery and Apprenticeship(s): Departing from Goethe's Turm \2. The British Master: Defoe, Dickens and Kipling \3. The French Fellow Craft: Voltaire, Prévost, Stendhal \4. The Italian Apprentice: Foscolo, Collodi \5. From Bildungsroman to Bildungsreise \Part II. Gender Lisa Downward \6. The Dissolution of Gendered Plots: Wilhelm Meister and the Beautiful Soul \7. Female Developments in the Nineteenth Century: Neera's Teresa, Lydia and L'indomani, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre \8. Female Developments in the Twentieth Century: Sibilla Aleramo's Una donna, Susanna Tamaro's Va' dove ti porta il cuore, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse \9. The Bildungsroman as Spectrum \Conclusion \Bibliography \Index