 2016 - 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0602-6178-01 | Narratives of Formation and the Bildungsroman in Western Literature | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
Narratives of Formation and the Bildungsroman in Western Literature
Dr. Maayan Harel
Narratives of formation and maturation were always fundamental for literature and culture. Usually, it represents a vulnerable young protagonist who must overcome familial and social obstacles such as parental desertion, abuse or social rejection, acquire independence and respectable mature identity.
The seminar will open with motifs of formation in myths and fairy tales, and dealing with some coming-to-age short stories. Later, our discussion will focus on the Bildungsroman, which became a major and highly popular subgenre of the novel – we will introduce the historical and cultural contexts of its appearance and its formal and content-related conventions. This genre offers a meeting point between the private and the collective, and we will discuss the ideological, national, gendered and socio-economic implications of this tension, and its variations in the female Bildungsroman. Finally, we shall explore the subversive function of the modern Bildungsroman.
We shall read closely in class three novels of formation: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and David Grossman's The Book of Intimate Grammar, in addition to theoretical and review articles.
Dr. Maayan Harel
Narratives of formation and maturation were always fundamental for literature and culture. Usually, it represents a vulnerable young protagonist who must overcome familial and social obstacles such as parental desertion, abuse or social rejection, acquire independence and respectable mature identity.
The seminar will open with motifs of formation in myths and fairy tales, and dealing with some coming-to-age short stories. Later, our discussion will focus on the Bildungsroman, which became a major and highly popular subgenre of the novel – we will introduce the historical and cultural contexts of its appearance and its formal and content-related conventions. This genre offers a meeting point between the private and the collective, and we will discuss the ideological, national, gendered and socio-economic implications of this tension, and its variations in the female Bildungsroman. Finally, we shall explore the subversive function of the modern Bildungsroman.
We shall read closely in class three novels of formation: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, and David Grossman's The Book of Intimate Grammar, in addition to theoretical and review articles.