The Irish Bildungsroman

The classical Bildungsroman charted an idealized path of human development: the harmonizing of individual desires and societal norms in the formation of a well-rounded liberal subject. But what happens when this Enlightenment blueprint for self-cultivation runs up against the particularities of a colonial society riven by nationalism, revolution, and uneven modernization?

The Irish Bildungsroman provides the first comprehensive study of how this quintessentially bourgeois and European genre is transformed and reinvented by Irish writers from the Act of Union to the present day. Through incisive readings of over two centuries of Irish novels, the volume’s contributors illuminate the diverse narrative strategies Irish authors have employed to depict personal formation within colonial and postcolonial communities shaped by competing religious, class, gender, and ethnic interests.

Periodized into three major sections, the book maps the evolution of the Irish Bildungsroman across key historical junctures: the rise of cultural nationalism in the nineteenth century, the revolutionary period and emergence of the postcolonial state in the early twentieth century, and more recent waves of globalization that have reconfigured Irish identity. From the post-Union novels of Maria Edgeworth and Sydney Owenson to contemporary immigrant fiction, The Irish Bildungsroman excavates a rich vein of self-reflexive writing that creatively reworks this genre to expose the fault lines of liberal humanism and to imagine new modes of selfhood.