ENGL 387
Growing Pains Fall 2024
Division I

We must all grow up. This much we know. We also know that as we grow up, we find new pleasures and deal with new pains. These discoveries can coincide when we come to desire what will harm us. But why? Why is growth essential, and why, despite its pains are we invested in growth and reiterate its necessity to others? This course considers these questions through the Bildungsroman, also known as the coming-of-age novel. Our readings will begin in the nineteenth century when the genre emerged and examine the concerns that informed and influenced the Bildungsroman, such as the expansion of the franchise, gendered divisions of labor, the imperial economy, and theories of racial difference. We will also consider how the Bildungsroman framed these issues. Narratives of individual development could serve as powerful, though at times misleading, analogies for larger-scale phenomena such as nationalist movements and evolution. As our readings extend into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we will observe how the Bildungsroman adapts to new national and global conditions such as decolonization and the capitalism of our times. Part of our task will be to consider the uses of the Bildungsroman today. We will read novels by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Thomas Hardy, Jean Rhys, George Lamming, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Kazuo Ishiguro. We will also engage with theorists such as Franco Moretti, Jed Esty, Sylvia Wynter, and Nancy Fraser.