Handbook

So pervasive is the "coming-of-age story" in contemporary culture that it seems universal; as natural and obvious as growing up itself. However, this plot structure has a history: it emerged in the eighteenth century, rose to dominance in the nineteenth and underwent a period of crisis and transformation in the twentieth, as new social and political realities challenged the limits of the form. ARTS3054 traces the evolution of this genre from its origins in the bildungsroman, or “novel of education”, to its most recent permutations in current fiction and film. Our selection of examples will range widely across media, time periods and geographical locations, pairing the classical with the contemporary and the canonical with the subversive. As well as asking why the transition from youth to maturity became such an important concern in modern literature, we will consider how this narrative template has been tested by changing historical conditions and how such narratives can help us to understand our own experiences of growing up in a rapidly changing world.