Teaching & Learning Guide for: Modernist Studies and the Bildungsroman: A Historical Survey of Critical Trends
Authors: Boes Tobias 
Published: December 2008

Author's Introduction

Since my original survey of scholarship on the modernist Bildungsroman was published three years ago, a number of exciting new additions to the field have appeared. Central among these is Gregory Castle's Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman (2006), an intelligent book‐length study of the genre that is to be especially commended for its introductory chapter, in which Castle surveys some of the differences between the German and British tradition that have so often served as stumbling blocks for previous critics. Additional work by Douglas Mao, Jed Esty and myself is noted below, under the section of ‘Author Recommends’ and the ‘Sample Syllabus’.

Author Recommends:

Gregory Castle, Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006).

Thoughtful work with detailed readings of modernist Bildungsromane by Wilde, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, and others. Should remain a major work in the field for some time to come. The introductory chapter situating the British Bildungsroman is comprehensive and engaging and would make ideal reading for advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate students.

Susan Cocalis, ‘The Transformation of Bildung from an Image to an Ideal’, Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht, deutsche Sprache und deutsche Literatur 70.4 (1978): 399–414.

A classic essay explaining the origins of the German conception of Bildung in the late eighteenth‐century. Although it touches on the Bildungsroman only in passing and on modernist fiction not at all, this should be required reading for any instructor of the subject. Also well‐suited for in‐class reports by advanced undergraduate students. Unfortunately, an even better and more recent examination of the rise of Bildung– Georg Bollenbeck's Bildung und Kultur: Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters (1994) – is available only in German.

Jed Esty, ‘Virgins of Empire: The Last December and the Antidevelopmental Plot’, Modern Fiction Studies 53.2 (2007): 257–75.

Engaging essay on Elizabeth Bowen's 1929 novel that uses the Bildungsroman tradition to interrogate the relationship between modernist fiction and colonialism, as well as the trappings of Anglo‐Irish identity. For further work by Esty, see the ‘Sample Syllabus’ below.

Joseph Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form and International Law (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2007).

A complex work that argues for a formal homology between the Bildungsroman and the discourse of human rights law. Winner of the 2008 René Wellek Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association. Densely argued and only suitable for the most advanced undergraduate readers. Also does not engage the modernist period directly. Nevertheless, a book brimming with original insights, and one that does a valuable service in internationalizing Bildungsroman studies.

Mark Stein, Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2004).

A good example of the many new directions in which the field has recently developed, Stein's survey of Black British fiction argues that the postcolonial Bildungsroman is best understood as a novel of transformation and adaptation rather than as a novel of formation.

Online Materials:

The Yale Modernism Lab

http://modernism.research.yale.edu

Collaborative project publishing research on the origins of literary modernism. In its current incarnation, the Web site focuses on British modernism only, though an expansion into other national traditions is planned for the future. Site includes a database, wiki, and suggestions for class projects and is thus a perfect complement to Literature Compass.

Modernist Journals Project

http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8082/exist/mjp/index.xml

Comprehensive database featuring many full‐text scans of the ‘little magazines’ that provided such a crucial publishing opportunity for British modernists. Contains information, but unfortunately not full text, for The Egoist, the magazine that serialized James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Google Lit Trips: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

http://web.mac.com/jburg/GoogleLit/Hi_Ed/Entries/2007/10/27_Portrait_of_the_Artist_as_a_Young_Manby_James_Joyce.html

Useful Web site that offers an interactive geographical companion to James Joyce's 1914 Bildungsroman. The kmz‐file, once opened, will add a layer to the Google Earth interface that allows users to accompany Stephen Dedalus on his journey through early‐twentieth‐century Ireland. A valuable teaching aid in helping students visualize the cityscape of Joyce's Dublin.

Sample Syllabus:

Modernism and the Novel of Youth

The following sample syllabus is intended for an upper‐level seminar taken primarily by English majors. The reading load is approximately 120 pages per week, not including secondary sources. This load can easily be lowered by dropping The Voyage Out from the schedule.

The syllabus can be used without any of the supplementary critical readings. In this case, the Bildungsroman becomes simply a unifying device through which to teach some of the canonical works of modern British prose fiction. (Dropping Castle and Moretti from the schedule will also free up an extra week and thus lighten the reading load). The central theme of the Bildungsroman tradition – the transition from youth into maturity – is one to which college students can easily relate, and will lead naturally to discussions of some of the many other issues that connect the works at hand.

Ideally, however, the novels will be taught alongside the critical readings, which offer a survey of the current state of modernist studies. All of the secondary sources have been published within the last ten years; most are no more than two years old. The essays and book chapters that I selected all use the Bildungsroman tradition as the starting point for an investigation of broader questions about the nature of modernist fiction. These include the relationship between modernism and colonialism, the ‘uneven’ nature of European modernity, and the role that state apparatuses play in the formation of modern subjectivity. The texts by Castle and Moretti are especially central in this regard, and I have assigned them a separate week at the beginning of the semester so that students can properly digest them. However, they are immediately followed by Joseph Conrad's The Shadow‐Line, a book that in my opinion partially negates both Castle's and Moretti's conclusions. Students are thus encouraged to form their own opinions about the texts on the syllabus.

The semester concludes with a reading of Kingsley Amis’Lucky Jim, a novel that isn't commonly treated as a Bildungsroman but that in fact satirically picks up on many of the themes that have been presented in earlier weeks of the semester.

Weeks 1–2:

Introduction to the Course and Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891).

Suggested critical reading: Douglas Mao, Fateful Beauty: Aesthetic Environments, Juvenile Development, and Literature, 1860–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008; ‘Introduction’ and ch. 1).

Week 3:

Gregory Castle, Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman (introduction).

Franco Moretti, The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture (new edition. London: Verso, 2000; ‘Introduction’ and ‘Appendix’).

Week 4:

Joseph Conrad, The Shadow‐Line (1917).

Weeks 5–7:

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914).

Suggested critical reading: Tobias Boes, ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and the ‘Individuating Rhythm’ of Modernity’, ELH 75.4 (2008): 767–85.

Weeks 8–10:

Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out (1915).

Suggested critical reading: Jed Esty, ‘Virginia Woolf's Colony and the Adolescence of Modernist Fiction’, in Richard Begam and Michael Valdez Moses (eds.), Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish Literature 1899–1939 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).

Weeks 11–13:

Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September (1929).

Suggested critical reading: Maria di Battista, ‘Elizabeth Bowen's Troubled Modernism’, in Begam and Moses (eds.), Modernism and Colonialism.

Weeks 14–15:

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim (1955).

Suggested critical reading: Greg Londe, ‘Reconsidering Lucky Jim: Kingsley Amis and the Condition of England’, in Marina MacKay and Lyndsey Stonebridge (eds.), British Fiction after Modernism: The Novel at Mid‐Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).