The Picaro's Journey to the Confessional : The Changing Image of the Hero in the German Bildungsroman

PMLA ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 89 (5) ◽  
pp. 980-992 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Miles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Outer World ◽  
Fragmented Self ◽  
The World

From Goethe's Wilhelm Meister through Keller's Grüner Heinrich to Rilke's Malte, the hero of the German Bildungsroman develops from unselfconscious adventurer in the outer world to compulsive explorer of the world within. This transformation in the hero—from “picaro” to “confessor”—implies a change in the concept of Bildung: the “self” no longer accumulates, but must be re-collected. Wilhelm Meister's unreflective nature aligns him directly with the picaresque hero; essentially, he does not develop. In Keller's novel the hero develops precisely by narrating his picaresque past. Through his confessional notebooks, Rilke's hero, Malte, attempts to overcome the “sickness” of his fragmented self by recollecting his childhood. This transformation of the literary hero in the nineteenth century mirrors in turn the historical rise of alienated, self-conscious man. Beyond Maire the Bildungsroman can only move on to parody, to the anti-Bildungsromane of Kafka, Mann, and Grass, in which both types of hero are parodied.

Women and Agency in Bankim’s Rajmohan’s Wife and Tagore’s The Home and The World

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Status Of Women

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.

David Brown's Divine Humanity

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-113
Author(s):  
Kathryn Tanner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mutual Influence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Primary Indication ◽  
The World ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
The Way

The contributions of this fine book are many but I will concentrate on three, before turning to several more critical remarks.First, and most obviously, the book does the invaluable service of surveying developments in kenotic christology in the nineteenth century while situating them nicely in their different contexts of origin and with reference to lines of mutual influence: continental, Scottish and British trends are all canvassed rather masterfully. Some attention, in lesser detail, is also given to the way these christological trends are extended in the twentieth century to accounts of the Trinity and God's relation to the world generally: kenosis, the self-emptying or self-limiting action of God, in the incarnation, is now viewed as a primary indication of who God is and how God works, from creation to salvation.

scholarly journals Fragmented Selves, Healing Visions

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 164-174
Author(s):  
Catrinel Popa ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Fragmented Self ◽  
The World

The purpose of this paper is to analyse two experimental “novels of the self”, written by two of the most innovative Jewish-Romanian writers of the ’30s: Max Blecher and H. Bonciu, stressing on those aspects they have in common with the mainstream of the twentieth-century Western literature. In both authors, inward disquietude is experienced as outward atmosphere, submerging the world in indefinable strangeness and mystery. In this context, the concept of “inner exile” and “fragmented self” may prove useful in defining the particular status of the narrators’perspective, as well as their relationship with the world (objects, settings, invisible traps, “sickly” or “healing” spaces).

Signs of the Times

Prospects ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 187-197
Author(s):  
V. P. Bynack
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Rapid Succession ◽  
American Scholar ◽  
Linguistic Model ◽  
The World ◽  
The Times ◽  
Fredric Jameson

The topic “Criticism, Biography, and Popular Culture” raises issues that epitomize current intellectual possibilities and problems. As Emerson said of his own time in “The American Scholar,” this is a moment when “the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of men are being searched by fear and hope.… This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.” If anyone's “energies” are being “searched by fear and hope” today, it's because we face a similar situation. The two preceding essays brought to bear in rapid succession two historically different models of how the world works. These models, which I will follow Fredric Jameson in calling the “organic” model of the nineteenth century and the “linguistic” model of the twentieth, imply two different versions of the character and status of language, two different versions of what literature is, two different versions of what the self is, and two different versions of what we could mean by saying that we use these things to study American “culture.”

The genius of Michael Faraday

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-323
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Self ◽  
Margaret Thatcher ◽  
Royal Institution ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Electrical Engineers ◽  
Michael Faraday

Geoffrey Cantor, Michael Faraday. Sandeminian and scientist. A study o f science and religion in the nineteenth century . Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1991. Pp. xi + 359. ISBN 0-333-55077-3. John Meurig Thomas, Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution. The genius of man and place . Bristol, Philadelphia and London: Adam Hilger, 1991. Pp. xii + 234. ISBN 0-7503-0145-7. The correspondence of Michael Faraday. Volume 1 , 1811-1831, edited by Frank A.J.L. James. London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1991. Pp. xlix + 673. ISBN 0-86341-248-3. ‘Very ordinary background, father ran a smithy, son had virtually no education ... didn’t go to university ... But extraordinary - brilliant. The Good Lord’s no respecter of backgrounds, never has been, He plants genius the world over and it’s up to us to find it’.1 Spoken neither by a scientist nor by a historian, these were the words by which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher elevated Faraday to the status of personal hero in 1987. Behind the rhetoric stood the conviction of 1980s Thatcherism, idealizing as it did the cult of the self-made, and challenging the very survival of those weighty institutions of education and science, most notably the universities, which had apparently played no part in the life and work of such great individuals as Michael Faraday and their entrepreneurial counterparts of the Thatcher years.

scholarly journals Martyrs and Missionaries: Strategies of Jesuit Sainthood between the Suppression and the Restoration

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-124
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Self ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Fundamental Information ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries

Abstract This article explores the promotion of “Jesuit sanctity,” in the delicate passage between the suppression and the restoration of the Society of Jesus, as a reflection of the process of revival of the order. The strategies of sainthood that were fostered by the ex-Jesuits during the suppression and by the restored Society reveal fundamental information about the self-image that the order wanted to show to the world. These strategies emerge clearly from the activity of the General Postulation for the Causes of Saints of the new Society of Jesus, which in the nineteenth century focused in particular on two models of sanctity: martyrs and missionaries (and often martyred missionaries). Presenting important case studies of Francesco De Geronimo and Andrzej Bobola, this article investigates the reasons why the Society of Jesus promoted these typologies of sanctity in lieu of the trauma of the suppression, which emerges as “martyrdom” in Jesuit sources, and in the process of re-establishment of the order. It eventually explores how this “policy” of sainthood fits more broadly in the history of the Catholic Church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

scholarly journals The Exemplary Life of Dimitrios Vikelas (1835-1908)

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Michael Llewellyn Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Public Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
Life Journey ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Education Culture

<p>This paper describes the "satisfying curve" of Dimitrios Vikelas' life journey, starting from Syros in 1835, moving via Constantinople, Odessa, and Syros again, to London, Paris and finally Athens. It explores Vikelas' multiple aspects, as merchant, writer, traveller, lecturer and essayist, Olympic founder, educationalist, book collector and philanthropist, all of which were united in the public-spirited man of letters (<em>logios</em>). It sets Vikelas in the context of the Greek commercial diaspora, the world of the London expatriate Greek community, and the dynamic society of late nineteenth-century Athens, beginning in the 1870s to act as a magnet to Greek expatriates. The author stresses two qualities of Vikelas: his belief in the idea of a progressive Greek state marked by advances in education, culture, tourism and standards of public life; and the self-awareness and experience which inform his autobiographical writings, not only his memoir <em>My Life</em> but also his last such work, <em>The War of 1897</em>.</p>

Class, Community, and Arab Historiography in the Early Nineteenth Century—The Dawn of a New Era

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Philipp
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Era ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
The World ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
Arab Historiography

The aim of the present essay is to explore some of the relations between the socioeconomic and political transformation which occurred in Syria during the eighteenth century and the development of a new view of the world and the self as it came to be expressed in the writings of several Arab historians at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Of particular interest in this context is the question of whether and when a clear departure from traditional patterns of society and thought can be discerned.

Spiritual Education for Sustainability in Women With Reference to Autobiographies

2019 ◽  
pp. 114-124
Author(s):  
Papiya Chatterjee ◽  
Deepanjali Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Private Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
Education For Sustainability ◽  
Spiritual Education ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Behavioral Traits ◽  
Outer World ◽  
The World

Spirituality is more or less measured with religion and morality, where both these words are emotional and deal with the public and private life. If education as widely accepted, is learning to see with new eyes then agreeably attending to spirituality is consciousness of the self and learning. Spirituality is a way of life where a person acquires greater understanding of himself and the outer world. People with spiritual education and awakening, possess a completely different view of the self and the world and further possess greater virtues and good behavioral traits. The chapter further throws light on the need and importance of spiritual education and learning in the lives of women.

scholarly journals Dr Katterfelto and the Prehistory of Astronomical Ballooning1

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Clive Davenhall
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Air Travel ◽  
The Self ◽  
World War ◽  
Astronomical Observations ◽  
The World

Regular telescopic astronomical observations made from balloons began after World War II, though scientific, particularly meteorological, ballooning dates from the mid-nineteenth century. However, astronomical ballooning has a curious prehistory at the dawn of lighter-than-air travel in the 1780s. The self-styled Dr Katterfelto (c.1743?-99) was a German-born travelling showman, lecturer and considerable self-publicist who in 1784-85 claimed to have made important astronomical discoveries from observations made from a balloon. It is unlikely that he made any such observations, or, indeed, any balloon flights. However, the episode throws some light on the world of the itinerant, eighteenth-century astronomical lecturer and the diffusion of contemporary astronomical and scientific knowledge.

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