Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman

McWilliams, Ellen

doi:10.4324/9781315249735

Cited by 11 publications

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“…The new perceptions of the self as unstable, fragmented and constantly shifting appear to have led to the decline of male versions of the genre in the second half of the twentieth century, 4 but the narratives of female Bildung still work with the "idea of the cohesive self moving towards clarity and a secure place in the world" (p. 20). However, these traditional representations of the self are, according to McWilliams (2009), "rendered in a new form removed from the measured, linear development propounded in the early Bildungsroman" (p. 20).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Twentieth-century developments of the female Bildungsroman have brought not only new types of heroines whose self-realization could be searched for in ways unthinkable for their eighteenth-century predecessors (equal access to formal education, active involvement in the public world of work and politics, explorations of female sexuality), but also greater thematic and formal variations of the genre. As McWilliams (2009) states, the contemporary female Bildungsroman ranges from "novels of childhood and adolescence to chronicles of transformation in middle age", usually focusing on the "moments of crisis", the turning points in the life of the heroine, "such as the onset of puberty, imminent marriage, or the prospect of children leaving home" (p. 20).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Queering gender in contemporary female Bildung narrative

Šnircová

2015

Journal of Language and Cultural Education

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The paper explores, in the context of feminist discussions about the Bildungsroman, a contemporary British novel that offers shocking images of female coming of age at the turn of the millennium. Queering gender and introducing male elements into the heroine's process of maturation, the analysed novel appears to raise questions about the continuous relevance of the feminist distinction between male and female version of the genre. The paper however argues that although significantly rewriting both female Bildung and pornographic narratives, Helen Walsh's Brass can still be read as a variation of the female Bildungsroman and an example of its contemporary developments.Keywords female Bildugsroman, male Bildungsroman, feminism, Helen Walsh, genderqueer IntroductionMaturation understood as the "development of an innate genetic potential under the influence of a particular geographical and cultural setting" (Summerfield and Downward, 2010, p. 2) is a relatively recent concept promoted within the humanist tradition which, from the eighteenth century onwards, has shaped the modern conception of selfhood. 1 The large number of literary representations of maturation that appeared during the Age of Enlightenment and the two centuries of its legacy reveal much about changing perceptions of the individual's inner world and its interaction with society. While at the beginning, the narratives of personal development possessed a high measure of thematic and structural idiosyncrasies which often formed the basis of rather narrow definitions of the Bildungsroman as a novel about a young middle-class man, the growing complexities of nineteenth-and twentieth-century society brought diversifications of the genre. The rising need to consider gender, class, ethnicity, race and sexuality in literary representations of maturation and in critical studies about them shows that both writers and critics realize that the traditional humanist idea of an internally developing individual as a unified, masculine, white, middle-class self no longer corresponds with the awareness of the complexities of personal development in the contemporary world.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queering gender in contemporary female Bildung narrative

Šnircová

2015

Journal of Language and Cultural Education

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“…The matter of growing up and maturation appears to be a perennial theme in literature since bygone ages. In the Introduction to her slim but wide-ranging study of the British female Bildungsroman, the author Soňa Šnircová sets her book in context encompassing the development of the Bildungsroman as a genre since its emergence in the Age of Enlightenment and the state of the art in contemporary, twentieth-and twenty-first-centuries British coming-of-age novels by women authors as well as relevant (feminist) theory and criticism, the latter largely including the North American scene though (Bubíková 2008, McWilliams 2009, Millard 2007, Rishoi 2003, Saxton 1998, White 1985, or more recently e.g. Bolaki 2011, Kolář 2015, Buráková 2015 and others, looking at young heroines from ethnic, religious and sexual minorities).This is where Šnircová finds a niche for herself to fill a gap she sees in academic research into British female coming-of-age narratives.…”

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confidence: 99%

[Šnircová, Soňa. Girlhood in British coming-of-age novels: the Bildungsroman heroine revisited]

Franková¹

2018

Brno Studies in English

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“…Cfr Feng (1998), McWilliams (2009,. o el capítulo dedicado al bildungsroman femenino enLazzaro-Weis, (1993).…”

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<b>El Bildungsroman femenino: análisis de la novela de formación <i>Un karma pesante

Ferrer

2018

Acta Sci. Lang. Cult.

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El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo abordar las diferencias existentes entre el Bildungsroman clásico y la novela de formación femenina, tal y como venían apuntando diversos estudios que surgieron a partir de la década de los 80. Para ello, se analizará la obra de escritora italiana Daria Bignardi, Un karma pesante, y se prestará especial atención a las estrategias narrativas que evidencian una clara ruptura con el canon literario tradicional. Estas diferencias apuntan tanto a la representación del proceso de formación del sujeto como a aspectos más formales del discurso, proponiendo así nuevas herramientas de análisis para un género que subvierte los valores literarios clásicos. Palabras clave: bildungsroman femenino, novela de aprendizaje, protagonista femenina, literatura italiana femenina. The female Bildungsroman: an analysis of the novel of formation in Un karma pesante ABSTRACT. The present paper aims to address the differences between the classic Bildungsroman and the novel of female formation as several studies that have emerged since the 80s have pointed out. For this, the work of the Italian writer Daria Bignardi, Un karma pesante, will be analyzed, and special attention will be paid to narrative strategies that clearly challenge the traditional literary canon. These differences point to the representation of the process of formation of the subject and to more formal aspects of the discourse and thereby proposing new tools of analysis for a genre that subverts more traditional literary values.

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Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Queering gender in contemporary female Bildung narrative

Queering gender in contemporary female Bildung narrative

[Šnircová, Soňa. Girlhood in British coming-of-age novels: the Bildungsroman heroine revisited]

<b>El Bildungsroman femenino: análisis de la novela de formación <i>Un karma pesante

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