The Bildungsroman/Coming-of-age Genre: Modern and Postmodern Elements

The Bildungsroman genre traces the development of the protagonist in a literary work from youth to adulthood in order to highlight the significant changes from innocence to experience and from naivety to maturity. Bildungsromane in the twentieth century revolve around sentimentality and emotional turmoil, so the growth of the personality starts from the heart, as the protagonists seek solutions in religion, love or social attachment. However, in the twenty-first century, the coming-of-age novels focus on the head not the heart, so they oppose those in the previous century as the mental turmoil has replaced the emotional turmoil, or the turmoil of the heart. Jane Housham (2013) describes this emotional numbness and continual stream of boredom as a sign of “autism”. Therefore, the characteristics of postmodern Bildungsroman protagonists reflect the changes taking place in the whole world, such as the fast pace of life and the development of technology.This book summarizes the history of the Bildungsroman/coming-of-age genre in order to identify the differences between the elements of contemporary coming-of-age novels and their predecessors in the twentieth century.