Word of the Week: Ever heard of a Bildungsroman?

It's more than just a fun word to say. Like soliloquy.

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While we may be some of the more voracious readers you know and we’d like to think that our academic focuses gave us a leg-up on literary terms and devices, we stumbled across a word—a genre in fact, that neither of us had ever heard of but had been sitting under our noses all along.

In literary criticism, the standard definition of a Bildungsroman is a genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. But it’s so much more than that.

The actual word Bildungsroman is the combination of two German words: Bildung, meaning “education,” and Roman, meaning “novel.” The plural is Bildungsromane. I just love this word.

Bil·dungs·ro·man n. /ˈbildo͝oNGzrōˌmän,ˈbēldo͝oNGks-/ noun: Bildungsroman; plural: Bildungsromane

I did the research (so you don’t have to!) on the history of Bildungsromane and it’s pretty boring. It was coined by a philologist—a person who studies literary texts—in 1800s Germany because his former teacher didn’t think he was worth anything. You can look it up if you want to but it’s not interesting and not worth talking about any longer!*

Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, about a man who lives an empty life as a businessman and goes on a journey of self-realization to find happiness, is largely considered the first published Bildungsroman novel. It grew in popularity in Britain after it was translated into English in 1824. The Book Bitches most likely will not be reviewing this book and we will take Bildungsroman experts’ word for it.

I know what you’re thinking—isn’t this just a coming-of-age novel? Not quite. Coming-of-age novels are more of a broad, catch-all term, while Bildungsromane are a narrow, specific genre that hones in on growth and education of a child to adult. The structure generally goes as follows: loss, journey, conflict/personal growth, maturity/resolution.

Even if the child only ages a few years, it’s the maturation and acknowledgment of said child as a point of the novel that makes it a Bildungsroman. Most Bildungsromane are coming-of-age novels, but not all coming-of-age novels are Bildungsromane. Make sense?

Now here are some of our favorites.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton

Circe by Madeline Miller

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell