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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zstb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 I I 73-26,836 HEROLD, Eve Griffith, 1936- A STUDY OF THE BILDUNGSROMAN IN AMERICAN LITERATURE. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1973 Language and Literature, general ■ University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan s: 0 1973 x v k o i i r r m h u o u ) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED. A STUDY OP THE BILDUNGSBOPAK IN Al-ERIGAli LITERATURE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Ihe Ohio State University By Eve G, Her old, £, Alf K, A, ****** The Ohio S ta te U n iv ersity 1973 Approved "by Adviser rtroent of English I ! ACKNOW LSDGI'ENIS I Kish to thank Professor Richard D, Altick, who first sug gested this project to me, and especially j>y adviser* Professor Julian Ilarkels, whose encouragement and criticism over the past several yoars have been equally invaluable to me* i i v m September 2?» 1936 * • • Bom - Evanston, Illinois 1958 B. A,( Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio 1962 ••»•»•••«• M, A,, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Fieldt American Literature Minor Field* Fiction H i TABIE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNCMIfiDGMENTS......................................................................... 11 v m .................................................................................... 111 CHAPT3R I ..................................................................... i I I ............................................................................................................ 53 III ............................................................................................................ 119 IV. .................... 145 V.......................................................................................................................................... 1 8 9 VI.............................................................................. 249 iv CHAPTER I I The process by which the adult’s social, mental, and spiritual life is shaped, for good or for ill, by the child's earliest contacts with his environment was a primary concern of the European Romantic movement. During the h alf-centu ry which elapsed between the publica tion of Emile (1762) and the composition of The Prelude (1805), the child became the object of an "unprecedented literary interest" and a symbol for the Romantic assertion of Self against certain oppres sive forms of social "experience,"! ihls preoccupation with the child we associate not only with the three literary giants of the Romantic movement, Rousseau, Goethe, and Wordsworth, but also with such figures as Pestalozzi, Fichte, Lessing, Schiller, Blake, and Coleridge. Invested by these writers with natural virtues that were threatened by the traditional methods of socialization, the child came to be viewed as a kind of "ideal man" who too often experienced growing up as a process of impoverishment, a steady reduction of pro ductive energy, creative thought, and moral sensitivity. From this view arose the Romantic demand that education involve something other APe te r Coveney, Poor Monkeyi The Child in L ite ra tu re (London, 1957)» PP. ix , x li. 1 2 than the curbing of vicious natural tendencies and the inculcation of cultural values, proprieties, and prejudices. To understand the emergence of this "cult of childhood"^ toward the end of the eighteenth century, we might briefly recall Ruth Benedict's observations on adolescence in Patterns of Culture, Kiss Benedict suggests that a society which emphasizes adolescence as a separate stage in the Individual's life history does so because it wishes to promote certain values by labeling them "adult" and insist ing that their acquisition Is necessary for full membership in the community. Thus, while the institutionalization of adolescence is a widespread phenomenon and one p a rtic u la rly notable in th e h isto ry of western civilization, it is not universal; by no biological or psycho logical necessity is it a critical stage in the life cycle. The truth is that such an institution is socially useful for promoting "adult" values and for discouraging patterns of behavior which it rel egates to the lower status of childhood,3 Kiss Benedict's analysis may help us to see how the cult of childhood, appearing at a critical point in the history of Western Europe, became a powerful and yet sub tle instrument of social criticism. By simply reversing the tradi tional status of childhood and adulthood, by regarding the child, rather than adult society, as "the purest manifestation and xeposi- 2 For a general discussion of this phenomenon see George Boas's The Cult of Childhood (London, 1966), 3 Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston and Hew York, 193*0, PP. 23-30. tory of ultimate cultural values, critics like Rousseau were able to subvert the established use of adolescence as a tool of socializa tion by making it instead a symbol of the last stage in which full identification with the best features of the culture could be madej adulthood came to mean the betrayal, rather than the acquisition, of fundamental human values. Of crucial Importance here is the strategy by which social criticism could be conducted on behalf of a genuine commitment to civilization. Insisting that man is born good and that evil is exclusively the product of socialization, Rousseau nev ertheless avoids becoming merely a prlm ltlvist. Indeed, by present ing an educational program designed to preserve the Innate virtues of the child for a socially responsible adulthood, Rousseau becomes a defender of true culture and genuine personal growth. The goal of Emile’s tutor is to bring him to adulthood by a process which will recapitulate, correct, and thus fu lfill the original but aborted evolution of modem civilization from primitive societies. The cult of the child, then, is really Improperly named since • i t cannot be regarded as a nostalgic desire by socially-estranged Romantics to retreat to the irresponsibility of the savage or the child. Rather, as it developed, its essential aim of criticizing contemporary society within the wider framework of allegiance to the progress of civilization became increasingly clear, like Rousseau, Wordsworth located the source of the adult’s powers in the child| in ^S, N. Eisenstadt, "Archtypal Patterns of Youth," The Challenge of Youth, ed, Erik H. Erikson (Garden City, New York, 1965), p. 32, the interest of their preservation, he urged that grovrfch be allowed to proceed organically, according to the laws of the individual being and unviolated by harsh and hostile social experience. But The Prelude celebrates his education by nature, not because it occurred outside society, but because it strengthened him for "purposes essen tially social," ■ Similarly, when he turns away from society to the healing power of nature at the end of the poem, it is hie belief that cultural as well as personal "revitalization" is at staked Goethe also dramatized growth as the interplay of self and society by showing that self-knowledge can only begin when man knows himself in the world. If Werther mourns the fate of the youth who fails in his struggle with stifling social proprieties, Wilhelm Keister cele brates the hero who comes to fu lfill himself only through contact with the ruling forms of culture. Refusing to make a simple equation between individual uniqueness and inborn nature, Goethe, more than any other Romantic, saw the self as coming to virtue, in the old sense of the word, vertu or power, only under the shaping