Bildungsroman

The Bildungsroman (German for 'novel of formation') is a generic variety of the novel that traces the spiritual, psychological, and moral development of a hero from youth to maturity, his gradual entry into the world. The term was introduced by the German philologist Karl Morgenstern, and its canonical model became Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. At its center is the process of a personality's formation through trials, errors, and the acquisition of experience; the ending usually records the hero's attainment of inner maturity and reconciliation with the world. Close to the genre are Dickens's David Copperfield and Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In Ukrainian literature, features of the Bildungsroman appear in Valerian Pidmohylny's The City, which traces the formation and moral temptations of the young intellectual Stepan Radchenko.