The Picaro's Journey to the Confessional : The Changing Image of the Hero in the German Bildungsroman

Abstract

From Goethe's Wilhelm Meister through Keller's Grüner Heinrich to Rilke's Malte, the hero of the German Bildungsroman develops from unselfconscious adventurer in the outer world to compulsive explorer of the world within. This transformation in the hero—from “picaro” to “confessor”—implies a change in the concept of Bildung: the “self” no longer accumulates, but must be re-collected. Wilhelm Meister's unreflective nature aligns him directly with the picaresque hero; essentially, he does not develop. In Keller's novel the hero develops precisely by narrating his picaresque past. Through his confessional notebooks, Rilke's hero, Malte, attempts to overcome the “sickness” of his fragmented self by recollecting his childhood. This transformation of the literary hero in the nineteenth century mirrors in turn the historical rise of alienated, self-conscious man. Beyond Maire the Bildungsroman can only move on to parody, to the anti-Bildungsromane of Kafka, Mann, and Grass, in which both types of hero are parodied.

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“…She goes on to contest Miles's "loose and conflating" (p. 122) perspective of the Bildungsroman with other literary genres, such as the picaresque novel. Miles (1974) claims that the difficulty with Hirsch's views and rigidity is that she approaches the Bildungsroman as a stable and unchanging form, and that this view demonstrates her "general unwillingness to concede historical shifts in the development of the Bildungsroman [. .…”

“…It is interesting to note that the claim that caused so much debate is present in Miles's discussion, "The Picaro's Journey to the Confessional: The Changing Image of the Hero in the German Bildungsroman," which focuses on three different German novels to demonstrate that the Bildung process in the nineteenth century was no longer taking place as a formal or exterior educational process in an actual society. Miles (1974) argues that Bildung within the nineteenth century was now taking place within the protagonist's mind. Miles points out that this historical shift in the Bildungsroman was inevitable due to the fact that novelists were trying to remain constant with the developments, perspectives, and values that were outstanding during the creation of their literary works:…”