apprenticeship novel

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Related Topics:: novel; bildungsroman

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apprenticeship novel, biographical novel that concentrates on an individual’s youth and his social and moral initiation into adulthood. The class derives from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795–96; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship). It became a traditional novel form in German literature, and the German word for this type of novel, Bildungsroman (meaning “novel of educational formation”), was absorbed into English. An English example of this type of novel is Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1849–50). Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (1929) is an American example. See also Künstlerroman.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.