The Bildungsroman in a Genocidal Age

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The Bildungsroman in a Genocidal Age argues that the humanist ideal of Bildung, the cultivation of the potentialities of the self through self-reflection, travel, and varied social intercourse, has been revitalized in an age of genocidal violence. It examines the Bildungsroman as a flourishing intermedial genre encompassing contemporary historical fiction, historical feature films, and childrens and YA literature. Analysing a number of highly influential novels and films about the Holocaust and World War II (WWII), the book argues that the narrative strategies of the Bildungsroman, which includes a swerve away from home and its parochialism and moral certainties, has contributed to shaping audience perceptions of traumatic histories and their ethical implications in the twenty-first century. The Bildungsroman in a Genocidal Age examines some of the most keenly discussed, and controversial historical fictions of recent decades including The Remains of the Day (1989), The Kindly Ones (2006, English trans. 2009), The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006), and Margarethe von Trottas biopic Hannah Arendt (2012). It argues that in portraying a protagonist who defers or refuses a prescribed social destiny, these novels and films are sensitive to the Eichmann problematic of the banality of evil as formulated by Hannah Arendt. These Bildungsromane, the study suggests, are designed to address the problem of the social reproduction of normative, unimaginative, and conformist mindsets that can enable totalitarian politics and genocidal policies.

Author Bio

Ned Curthoys is Senior Lecturer in English and Literary Studies at the University of Western Australia. He is the author of The Legacy of Liberal Judaism: Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendts Hidden Conversation (2013).