The Bildungsroman

Readings of novels in the Bildungsroman tradition and the theoretical questions of the genre: the historicity and constitution of the self; problems of the representation of a life; the category of the unity of a life as a factor of identity; notions of progress, development and completion. Considerations of the successes and failures of this model. Readings to be selected from Rousseau, Chateaubriand, Sterne, Goethe, Novalis, Flaubert, Musil, Kerouac.