Checking saved dictionary data and trusted language sources. This will stop automatically if a source does not respond.
/ˈbɪl.dʊŋzˌɹoʊ.mən/ · noun
A novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character, usually from childhood to maturity..
English speakers are more hospitable to fiction in translation, and yet when was the last time you heard someone mention “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship” or “Elective Affinities,” Goethe’s long fictions? These books have a good claim to have founded two of the major genres of the modern novel—respectively, the Bildungsroman and the novel of adultery.
Goethe's honorific assignment to the vanguard of a uniquely German novelistic tradition of the bildungsroman simultaneously places him outside the mainstream of the development of the novel.
Use bildungsroman when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Bildungsroman means A novel tracing the spiritual, moral, psychological, or social development and growth of the main character, usually from childhood to maturity..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
English speakers are more hospitable to fiction in translation, and yet when was the last time you heard someone mention “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship” or “Elective Affinities,” Goethe’s long fictions? These books have a good claim to have founded two of the major genres of the modern novel—respectively, the Bildungsroman and the novel of adultery.
FreeDictionaryAPI.com / Wiktionary · Original source · CC BY-SA 4.0
Dictionary data is provided by FreeDictionaryAPI.com and sourced from Wiktionary under its stated license.