Beyond all reason: The Bildungsroman genre and ethnic American literature.

摘要

Because it has no distinct formal characteristics, the Bildungsroman genre is defined only through the reader's recognition of the protagonist's transformation from an inchoate identity to a fixed, mature one. This recognition depends on how the protagonist's development conforms to a model of maturation derived from Enlightenment ideals of the individual as autonomous and rational. By responding to the contested nature of identity in American culture, this re-generation of the Enlightenment paradigm as a natural expression of the self is the foundation for the Bildungsroman's popularity. When applied to ethnic American texts that critique the structures of racism and patriarchy, the genre destabilizes those critiques by reinforcing the Enlightenment paradigm from which those structures are derived.The use of autobiographical ethnic Bildungsromane as representative texts often relies on reductive assumptions about the concept of truth, but key texts such as Black Boy, by Richard Wright, and The Autobiography of Malcolm X demonstrate the mediated nature of truth in autobiography, and the reception of their texts reveals the problems associated with the assumption of the transparent truth of the texts. Jamaica Kincaid also undermines the transparent relationship between truth and autobiography, as well as the independent self of the Bildungsroman, by presenting her development as a writer through accounts of her father and brother.The role of ethnic Bildungsromane as representative texts inspires anxiety about the concept of authenticity. The texts of second generation immigrant writers Richard Rodriguez, Maxine Hong Kingston and Paule Marshall are recognized by readers as Bildungsromane, but that recognition, through the writers' struggle with cultural authenticity, celebrates a fluid conception of identity while simultaneously authorizing an overly personal interpretation of the protagonists' struggle to define their cultural identity.The Bildungsroman implicitly posits a fixed cultural identity in its definition of the self, but cultural identity is fundamentally dynamic, formulated, in part, in a dialogic relationship with historical narratives. The adaptation of two prominent African American novels to films, The Color Purple and Beloved, by emphasizing the Bildungsroman element of personal development, sacrifice the richer historical, cultural identities of the novels.