Advertisement

Advertisement

View synonyms for Bildungsroman

Bildungsroman

[ bil-doongz-roh-mahn; German beel-doongks-raw-mahn ]

noun

, plural Bil·dungs·ro·mans, German Bil·dungs·ro·ma·ne [beel, -d, oo, ngks-, r, aw-mah-n, uh].
  1. a type of novel concerned with the education, development, and maturing of a young protagonist.


Bildungsroman

/ ˈbɪldʊŋsromaːn /

noun

  1. a novel concerned with a person's formative years and development
“Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged” 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Discover More

Word History and Origins

Origin of Bildungsroman1

1905–10; < German, equivalent to Bildung formation + -s noun ending in compounds + Roman novel
Discover More

Word History and Origins

Origin of Bildungsroman1

literally: education novel
Discover More

Example Sentences

One of them is the bildungsroman.

It dawns on me that the real reason I’d taken the upper limit off my Hinge settings and agreed to this date is that I thought I might find someone like my former professor, whose class on the bildungsroman was my main motivation for applying to grad school.

He previously published “Some Hell,” a gay bildungsroman that was a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award, and nonfiction with 2021’s “Image Control.”

Molly learns a passel of thinpgs in this surrealist, carnivalesque bildungsroman.

While the 2017 Booker Prize-shortlisted “4321” was a hulking, sprawling bildungsroman that charted one man’s four lives in long, meandering sentences, “Baumgartner” is a more scaled-down, stripped-back affair that traces a single life-trajectory in a more conventional way.

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement