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The Bildungsroman Project

coming-of-age since the 18th century

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    • literary examples
    • cultural contexts
    • personal narratives
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Though it is by no means exhaustive, we offer this collection of bildungsromane to stimulate your reading, viewing, and writing.

Books, Short Stories, and Long Poems:

"A&P" (John Updike)
All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy)
Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
Ann Frank's diary (nonfiction memoir)
Annie John (Jamaica Kincaid)
"Araby" (short story by James Joyce)
Awakening, The (Kate Chopin)
Bastard Out of Carolina (Dorothy Allison)
Black Boy (Richard Wright)
Bless Me, Ultima (Rudolfo Anaya)
Brown Girl, Brownstone (Paulie Marshall)
Chosen, The (Chaim Potok)
Cold Sassy Tree (Olive Ann Burns)
"Daisy Miller" (short story by Henry James)
David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
Emma (Jane Austen: to some extent all her novels apply)
Frankenstein (Mary Shelly)
"Flowers" (very short story by Alice Walker)
Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
Henry VI, Part I (play by William Shakespeare – a proto-bildungsroman, perhaps?)
Hobbit, The (J.R.R Tolkien)
Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
Importance of Being Earnest, The (play by Oscar Wilde)
Into the Wild (nonfiction, Jon Krakauer)
Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe)
Manfred (poem by George Gordon, Lord Byron)
Member of the Wedding (Carson McCullers)
Prelude, The (poem by William Wordsworth)
Of Human Bondage (M. Sommerset Maugham)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
Peace Like A River (Leif Enger)
Perks of Being a Wallflower, The (Stephen Chebosky)
Peter Pan (the play) or the novel version: Peter and Wendy (J.M. Barrie)
"Pippa Passes" (poem by Robert Browning)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, A (James Joyce)
Ragged Dick; or Street Life in New York With the Bootblacks (Horatio Alger, Jr.)
Red Badge of Courage, The (Stephen Crane)
Red Pony, The (John Steinbeck)
Secret Garden, The (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Sentimental Journey, A (Laurence Sterne)
Separate Peace, A ( John Knowles)
Sula (Toni Morrison)
Songs of Innocence and Experience (collected poetry by William Blake)
This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald -- anything by Fitzgerald probably counts, including many short stories)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
Tom Jones (another proto-bildungsroman candidate, this one by Henry Fielding)
Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson)
What Maisie Knew (Henry James)
White Heron, A (Sarah Orne Jewett)
Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (Johan Wolfgang Goethe)

Films:

Consider any of the films on this list: http://www.film.com/movies/best-coming-of-age-movies. Dr. Carlson would also add Splendour in the Grass.

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The Bildungsroman Project is produced by Dr. Katherine Carlson and students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Copyright 2013-2014. All rights reserved.