The Bildungsroman

The book The Bildungsroman: Re-birth, Travels, and Conversations Across the Mediterranean, Irish, and Red Seas aims to explore the history and evolution of the bildungsroman genre by moving beyond its traditional Eurocentric foundations, often associated with Goethe as the archetype of the genre. Goethe’s novel is commonly used as the reference point for West-East, East-West frameworks in the discourse of the bildungsroman genre. This, however, disavows literary traditions and influences on the bildungsroman novel that may have originated at earlier times or at different places and limits the study of bildungsroman novels across disparate geographies and times. The main purpose of the book is to broaden the reach of this genre beyond its Western origins, demonstrating its worldwide relevance and evolution—particularly within postcolonial contexts and from the perspective of Arab female postcolonial subjects. In doing so, it examines how the genre adapts as it travels across different cultural, historical, and geographical settings.