Bildungsroman? And it’s not a novel about a scat-fight between Bill and Roman.
OK, so a lot of people will be looking up literary terms, so why not try to help people out and decode some of them? Today’s word: Bildungsroman. It’s a style of german novel (originally) that told the story of a character through all the influential parts of their life, generally the main focus is the progress from childhood to maturity. Though it originated in Germany, it too gained a firm foothold in the UK. For instance, in Jane Eyre, there are five significant sections: Gatesfield, Lowood, Thornfield, Morton and Moor House. Other famous bildungsroman novels are Robinson Crusoe, David Copperfield, Great Expectations (Dickens was anything but terse), Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and Siddhartha. Some may argue that the genre is much wider, including books/series such as Harry Potter, Starship Troopers, Grendel, and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Makes sense to me. So there you go. Drop Bildungsroman in an everyday conversation. And now you may even be able to use it in context.