Why the Bildungsroman no longer works

• Published in: Textual practice Vol. 34; no. 12; pp. 2091 - 2111
• Main Author: Armstrong, Nancy
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abindgon Routledge 01.12.2020; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Bildungsroman; bricolage; British & Irish literature; Charles Dickens; Compositional styles; Dickens, Charles (1812-1870); English literature; flat characters; Narratives; Novels; seriality; service work; Television; Tom McCarthy
• ISSN: 0950-236X; 1470-1308
• DOI: 10.1080/0950236X.2020.1834691

Why are "flat" protagonists, in increasing numbers, displacing the well-rounded and internally fraught individuals that pulled their personal experiences together as a progressive narrative for readers of the Bildungsroman? Why have today's novels turned against that form, broken up that individual, and dispersed its component parts in a discontinuous sequence of singular characters capable of taking part in the rapidly fluctuating social clusters of their kind, a narrative form that cinematic and television serials readers have been streaming these days? It could well be that reading these novels requires us to imagine ourselves as participants in a world where work no longer consists of managing production, much less of producing things. The work both of and in the novel consists instead of around-theclock, machine-assisted extraction and repackaging of feelings, thoughts, and fantasies as marketable information, the result of which is flatness.