Pataphysical discourses in the German Bildungsroman

Scholars come miraculously close to providing navigable descriptions of the phenomenon of the German Bildungsroman, despite having failed entirely to solve for the central equation that links the meaning of the word 'Bildungsroman' with a definition of 'Bildung ' that distinguishes the genre from other novelistic forms. Thus, English, Comparative Literature, and even French departments use ' Bildungsroman' with impunity to cover various and sundry novels of personal development, despite the availability of another German word, ' Entwicklungsroman', that would apply precisely to works like Great Expectations or Le Rouge et Le Noir. The abuse of the term 'Bildungsroman' worsens the haze around the concept of Bildung, which is central to the Bildungsroman , and which has a meaning within the discourses surrounding and penetrating the essence of the Bildungsroman that differs from the larger, more pedestrian concept of Bildung as cultural acclimation, which itself is closer to Ausbildung, or education, than to the Bildung literary theorists would like to study. A hermeneutic circle emanates from the space in which the Bild sought by the process of Bildung chronicled and thematized in the Bildungsroman might emerge; this circle provides the impetus for intentional discourse to grow around the set of inter-textually linked novels correctly classified as Bildungsromane, beginning with Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre and Novalis' Heinrich von Ofterdingen and expanding beyond Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg and Hermann Hesse's Glasperlenspiel. To illuminate the space into which the Bild that Bildung seeks might project itself is the intention of my analysis. In this sense, my project is aligned with the discourse that it studies, sharing its aim and ultimately hoping to disclose the Bild that completes Bildung and allows the Bildungsroman to complete itself, rising above the ambivalent endings that leave the essence of the genre open to misinterpretation.