The Regional Development of the American Bildungsroman, 1900-1960 - Hardcover

by Tamlyn Avery (Author)

Why did the Bildungsroman, defined as the novel of development, and its protagonist Youth, become the symbolic form of the U.S.'s cultural preoccupation with regional difference amidst the nation's rapid but uneven development c.1900-1960? As a genre that historically represented the young individual's development in national-historical time, the Bildungsroman became one crucial means of configuring the culturally, politically, and economically asymmetrical effects of national modernization and the U.S.'s political ascendence within the capitalist world-system. Responding to that predicament, the novel of uneven development rose to salience, led by its protagonist, the unfixed youth, whose development within the national-historical time of Americanization is unsettled by their preoccupation with regional difference: an immobilizing entanglement I call American literature's regional complex. This book maps four prominent variations across the Midwest, Northeast, South, and Southwest that responded to that uneven development, fragmenting, and ultimately denying the Bildungsroman's consolidation into a coherent nationalist form.

Back Jacket

Challenges and re-orients current understandings of where the Bildungsroman fits into American literary history The Bildungsroman, a genre of the novel which narrativises youth's development, became one crucial means of configuring the culturally, politically and economically asymmetrical effects of national modernisation and the political ascendance of the United States within the capitalist world-system, circa 1900-1960. The Regional Development argues that during this period, the novel of 'uneven development' rose to salience, led by its protagonist, the 'unfixed youth', whose development within the national-historical time of Americanisation is unsettled by their preoccupation with regional difference; an immobilising entanglement Avery calls American literature's 'regional complex'. This book maps four prominent variations across the Midwest, Northeast, South and Southwest that responded to that uneven development, fragmenting and ultimately denying the Bildungsroman's consolidation into a coherent nationalist form. Tamlyn Avery is a Lecturer in American Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia.

Author Biography

Dr Tamlyn Avery is a Lecturer in American Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia. Her research into the Bildungsroman, nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and modernism has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including PMLA American Literature, The Mississippi Quarterly and Australian Feminist Studies. She is the co-editor of the modernist studies journal, Affirmations: of the Modern.