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The Modernist Bildungsroman The Modernist Bildungsroman : End of Forms Most Beautiful by Selin Ever Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date: _________________________________ Approved: _________________________________ Toril Moi, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Thomas Pfau, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Michael Hardt _________________________________ Fredric Jameson _________________________________ Frank Lentricchia Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Abstract The Modernist Bildungsroman : End of Forms Most Beautiful by Selin Ever Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date: _________________________________ Approved: _________________________________ Toril Moi, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Thomas Pfau, Co-Supervisor _________________________________ Michael Hardt _________________________________ Fredric Jameson _________________________________ Frank Lentricchia An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2013 Copyright by Selin Ever 2013 Abstract This dissertation explores the modernist novel’s response to the Bildungsroman. Through close readings of the three modern versions of the genre — In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, and Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz — it shows that the tensions buried deep in the unconscious of this great narrative of organic development finally erupt as formal problems in modernism, when the classical Bildungsroman meets its demise through a relentless dehumanization of form. If the classical Bildungsroman presents us with “the image of man in the process of becoming” as Bakhtin has suggested, it argues that the modernist Bildungsroman enacts the dissolution of that process in its very form. iv For my parents v Acknowledgments I am grateful to all members of my dissertation committee for their valuable input to this project. I would especially like to thank my supervisors. Toril Moi patiently read through the numerous drafts of the chapters, and provided detailed and engaging feedback. Her work on early modernism helped me rearticulate the relationship between idealism and modernism. She was also very supportive and understanding in the stressful moments of this long process. The idea of this dissertation was first conceived during Thomas Pfau’s two- semester course on Bildung, “Developmentalism Across the Disciplines” (Spring 2007) and “Bildung as Genre/Institution” (Spring 2008). I am indebted to him for the comprehensive historical and intellectual foundation he provided both in the classroom and in his own writing. This project builds significantly on his work on Bildung/Bildungsroman, and re-engages with his observations in the context of modernism. I would like to thank Fredric Jameson, whose thoughts on modernism and form are constant sources of inspiration, and to Frank Lentricchia, whose attention to close reading of literary texts was always at the back of my mind throughout the writing process. I am grateful to Michael Hardt for his support throughout my time at Duke, and his feedback on the dissertation. vi I am grateful to the Literature Program, the Graduate School, Thompson Writing Program, Franklin Humanities Institute and Slavic/Eurasian Studies for their financial support and teaching opportunities through the years. I would like to thank all the administrative staff in the Literature Program for their assistance, especially to Tiwonda Johnson-Blount. Last but not least, I would like to thank all my family, friends (particularly Tim Wright for his help in formatting!) and my former professors at Bogazici University, especially Suna Ertugrul. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VI INTRODUCTION: THE BILDUNGSROMAN IN HISTORY 1 THE BILDUNGSROMAN 3 THE PHANTOM GENRE 15 BILDUNG AND ORGANICISM 21 THE MODERNIST BILDUNGSROMAN 25 CHAPTER 1: PROUST’S PHOTOGRAPHIC UNCONSCIOUS: IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME AS AN ENTWICKLUNGSROMAN 32 SUPERIMPOSITION OF SELVES 36 “A PICTURE THAT PAINTS ITSELF” 43 INVOLUNTARY MEMORY 48 THE PHOTOGRAPHIC UNCONSCIOUS 51 CHAPTER 2: THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE BILDUNGSROMAN 68 CASTORP’S PLAY 70 FORM AND PLAY 88 DEATH, TECHNOLOGY, BILDUNG 92 FORM OF HUMANISM 106 HISTORY VERSUS AUTONOMY 111 THE MUSIC OF THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN 114 CHAPTER 3: APPRENTICESHIP IN IMMATURITY: FERDYDURKE AS AN ANTI-BILDUNGSROMAN 118 POLISH FORM 121 JOHNNIE KOWALSKI’S APPRENTICESHIP 131 MATURITY/IMMATURITY 135 AT SCHOOL 140 GOMBROWICZ’S IDEA OF FORM 144 REGRESS OF REASON 152 MODERNITY AS STYLE 160 CHAPLIN AND GOMBROWICZ 167 DESCENT INTO FORM 174 viii CONCLUSION: THE CURSE AND THE BLESSING OF FORM 185 BIBLIOGRAPHY 188 BIOGRAPHY 197 ix INTRODUCTION: The Bildungsroman in History Surprisingly little has been written about modernism’s relationship with the tradition of Bildung and the genre of Bildungsroman. In fact, there is only one book- length study devoted to the subject.1 Research abounds in the area of classical Bildungsroman, but even there, complications specific to the genre seem to make any definition more elusive than illuminating. It is in fact telling that the problematic status of the genre has become a research topic in its own right as an emblem of the larger issues regarding aesthetics as a discipline.2 In general, though, Bildungsroman is either considered “an exhausted form,” thus foreclosing the possibility to think about its relationship to modernism, or it is analyzed with little attention to the theoretical underpinnings of the paradigm of Bildung.3 From the outset, it must be noted that a comprehensive reflection on modernism’s relationship to the tradition of Bildungsroman is not possible without displacing the often unwarranted assumptions about the classical form, which proves to be a difficult task since the classical form itself is very much “a phantom,” to adopt Redfield’s term. Yet, even amidst the nomenclatural complications, it is safe to say that Bildungsroman is commonly understood to be a narrative of development, with a 1 Gregory Castle, Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman, (University Press of Florida, 2006) 2 Marc Redfield, Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology and the Bildungsroman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) 3 Moretti’s influential study on the genre mostly focuses on narrative structure, while Minden’s The German Bildungsroman “offers a definition of the genre based on the peculiarities of the texts themselves, not on the idea of Bildung” (1997). 1 young hero gradually resolving his inner conflicts, finding his vocation and finally achieving a harmonious unity with society after coming to terms with his own limitations. Thus, it is taken to be following a strictly teleological trajectory, the stifling sense of compromise and conformism being the inevitable end. While it is true that most of the novels commonly ascribed to the genre follow this basic narrative, reducing it to such simple terms completely ignores the genre’s nuanced relationship with the paradigm of Bildung and its cultural, historical, aesthetic, philosophical and formal concerns. Missing these concerns eventually leads to a misreading of modernism’s treatment of the genre. This dissertation argues that the modernist Bildungsroman arises from the classical genre’s inherent contradictions. Given the classical Bildungsroman’s investment in organicism and hence the unity of form and content, the modernists react against the tradition of Bildung that lives on merely as a relic of bourgeoisie by dehumanizing, subverting and ultimately destroying the old form through its own contradictions buried under a façade of social and aesthetic harmony. In order to fully comprehend modernism’s relationship with the Bildungsroman, a closer look at the history of the classical genre is in order. 2 The Bildungsroman Curiously, it is much easier to talk about the history of the term of the Bildungsroman than the actual history of the genre itself. The term Bildungsroman was first used by Karl Morgenstern as early as 1810, in a lecture entitled “Über den Geist und Zusammenhang einer Reihe philosophischer Romane” (“On the Spirit and Connection of a Series of Philosophical Novels”), later published in 1817 in the third volume of Dörptische Beyträge für Freunde der Philosophie, Litteratur und Kunst.4 In his later lectures of 1819 and 1820, Morgenstern explains that the genre will “justly bear the name Bildungsroman first and primarily on account of its thematic material, because it portrays the Bildung of the hero in its beginnings and growth to a certain stage of completeness; and also secondly because it is by virtue of this portrayal that it furthers the reader’s Bildung to a much greater extent than any other kind of novel.”5 Although the term was first coined by Morgenstern, and applied to the novels of Friedrich Maximilian Klinger, the first theoretical study of the genre appears in Christian Friedrich von Blanckenburg’s Versuch über den Roman (Essay on the Novel), (1774), which was published only a few years after Christoph Martin 4 Fritz Martini, “Bildungsroman: Term and Theory”, Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman. Ed. James Hardin (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999) p.3 5 quoted in Martin Swales, The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to
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