Title: Novel affinities : composing the family in the German novel, 1795-1830 /
Authors: Eldridge, Sarah Vandegrift,
Year: 2016
Subjects: German fiction History and criticism.; Families in literature.; Families in literature.; German fiction
Abstract: "The novel, according to standard scholarly narratives, depicts an individual's path to maturity. Scholarship on the rise of the novel in Germany and in Europe has essentially collapsed the genre into the individualist Bildungsroman, exemplified by an extremely narrow canon. This study challenges and nuances this narrative, first by expanding the focus from the individual to the family, second by broadening the field of novels under consideration to include not only canonical works but also so-called "trivial literature," and third by reading novels alongside contemporary biological, legal, and pedagogical texts"--
Contents: Introduction: novel subjects, novel genealogies -- I. Models of generation -- The formation of the self: biology and pedagogy around 1800 -- Cultivated resemblance: imitation and education in the novel -- II. Text as testament -- Direct testation: legal inheritance, plot inheritance, origin stories -- Indirect testation: documents, written culture, and the writing of life -- Conclusion: novel instability.