Künstlerroman
Encyclopedia
A Künstlerroman (ˈkʏnstlɐ.ʁoˌmaːn; plural -ane), meaning "artist's novel" in German, is a narrative
about an artist's growth to maturity. It may be classified as a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman
; such a work, usually a novel, tends to depict the conflicts of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his or her time.
In English
Alasdair Gray
's Lanark: A Life in Four Books consists of four books arranged in the order 3, 1, 2, 4; books 1 and 2 constituting a Künstlerroman. In John Dos Passos
' U.S.A. trilogy
, the Camera Eye sections add up to a modernist
autobiographical
Künstlerroman. John Barth
's Lost in the Funhouse
is a collection of short stories that are often read as a postmodernist
Künstlerroman.
In Italian
In Icelandic
In Russian
In Croatian:
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
about an artist's growth to maturity. It may be classified as a specific sub-genre of Bildungsroman
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
; such a work, usually a novel, tends to depict the conflicts of a sensitive youth against the values of a bourgeois society of his or her time.
Examples
In German- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
's 1774 The Sorrows of Young WertherThe Sorrows of Young WertherThe Sorrows of Young Werther is an epistolary and loosely autobiographical novel by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, first published in 1774; a revised edition of the novel was published in 1787... - Ludwig TieckLudwig TieckJohann Ludwig Tieck was a German poet, translator, editor, novelist, writer of Novellen, and critic, who was one of the founding fathers of the Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.-Early life:...
's 1798 Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen - Hermann HesseHermann HesseHermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
's DemianDemianDemian: The Story of Emil Sinclair's Youth is a Bildungsroman by Hermann Hesse, first published in 1919; a prologue was added in 1960. Demian was first published under the pseudonym "Emil Sinclair", the name of the narrator of the story, but Hesse was later revealed to be the author.-Plot summary...
(1919) and Klingsor's Last SummerKlingsor's Last SummerKlingsor's Last Summer is a novella by Hermann Hesse.Written over the course of a few weeks in July and August 1919, it was published in December 1919 in the Deutsche Rundschau...
(1920) - Thomas MannThomas MannThomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
's Death in VeniceDeath in VeniceThe novella Death in Venice was written by the German author Thomas Mann, and was first published in 1913 as Der Tod in Venedig. The plot of the work presents a great writer suffering writer's block who visits Venice and is liberated and uplifted, then increasingly obsessed, by the sight of a...
(1912), Tonio KrögerTonio KrögerTonio Kröger is a novella by Thomas Mann, written early in 1901, when he was 25. It was first published in 1903.-Plot summary:The narrative follows the course of a man's life from his schoolboy days to his adulthood. The son of a north German merchant and an Italian artist, Tonio inherited...
(1903), and Doktor Faustus (1947) - Jakob WassermannJakob WassermannJakob Wassermann was a Jewish-German writer and novelist.- Life :Born in Fürth, Wassermann was the son of a shopkeeper and lost his mother at an early age. He showed literary interest early and published various pieces in small newspapers...
's 1915 Das Gänsemännchen
In English
- 1805 William WordsworthWilliam WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
's "The PreludeThe PreludeThe Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind is an autobiographical, "philosophical" poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote the first version of the poem when he was 28, and worked over the rest of it for his long life without publishing it...
" - 1848 Anne BrontëAnne BrontëAnne Brontë was a British novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.The daughter of a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England, Anne Brontë lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire moors. For a couple of years she went to a...
's The Tenant of Wildfell HallThe Tenant of Wildfell HallThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall is the second and final novel by English author Anne Brontë, published in 1848 under the pseudonym Acton Bell... - 1850 Charles DickensCharles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
' David CopperfieldDavid Copperfield (novel)The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery , commonly referred to as David Copperfield, is the eighth novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a novel in 1850. Like most of his works, it originally appeared in serial... - 1852 Herman MelvilleHerman MelvilleHerman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
's Pierre: or, The AmbiguitiesPierre: or, The AmbiguitiesPierre: or, The Ambiguities is a novel written by Herman Melville, and published in 1852 by Harper & Brothers.The publication of Pierre was a critical and financial disaster for Melville. It was universally condemned for both its morals and its style... - 1856 Elizabeth Barret Browning's Aurora LeighAurora LeighAurora Leigh is an eponymous epic novel/poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The poem is written in blank verse and encompasses nine books . It is a first person narration, from the point of view of Aurora; its other heroine, Marian Erle, is an abused self-taught child of itinerant parents...
- 1875 Henry JamesHenry JamesHenry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
's Roderick HudsonRoderick HudsonRoderick Hudson is a novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1875 as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly, it is a bildungsroman that traces the development of the title character, a sculptor.-Plot summary:... - 1890 Henry JamesHenry JamesHenry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
's The Tragic MuseThe Tragic MuseThe Tragic Muse is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1889-1890 and then as a book in 1890... - 1909 Jack LondonJack LondonJohn Griffith "Jack" London was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone...
Martin EdenMartin EdenMartin Eden is a novel by American author Jack London, about a proletarian young autodidact struggling to become a writer. It was first serialized in the Pacific Monthly magazine from September 1908 to September 1909, and subsequently published in book form by Macmillan in September 1909.This book... - 1913 Marcel ProustMarcel ProustValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
's In Search of Lost TimeIn Search of Lost TimeIn Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely... - 1913 D. H. LawrenceD. H. LawrenceDavid Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
's Sons and LoversSons and LoversSons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.-Plot introduction and history:... - 1914 James JoyceJames JoyceJames Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManA Portrait of the Artist as a Young ManA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a semi-autobiographical novel by James Joyce, first serialised in the magazine The Egoist from 1914 to 1915, and published first in book format in 1916 by B. W. Huebsch, New York. The first English edition was published by the Egoist Press in February 1917... - 1915 W. Somerset MaughamW. Somerset MaughamWilliam Somerset Maugham , CH was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.-Childhood and education:...
's Of Human BondageOf Human BondageOf Human Bondage is a novel by W. Somerset Maugham. It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, although Maugham stated, "This is a novel, not an autobiography, though much in it is autobiographical, more is pure invention." Maugham, who had... - 1915 Willa CatherWilla CatherWilla Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
's Song of the Lark - 1918 Wyndham LewisWyndham LewisPercy Wyndham Lewis was an English painter and author . He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art, and edited the literary magazine of the Vorticists, BLAST...
's "TarrTarrTarr is a modernist novel by Wyndham Lewis, written in 1909-11, revised and expanded in 1914-15 and first serialized in The Egoist from April 1916 until November 1917...
" - 1920 F. Scott FitzgeraldF. Scott FitzgeraldFrancis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
's This Side of ParadiseThis Side of ParadiseThis Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke poem Tiare Tahiti, the book examines the lives and morality of post-World War I youth. Its protagonist, Amory Blaine, is an attractive Princeton University... - 1927 Virginia WoolfVirginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's To the LighthouseTo the LighthouseTo the Lighthouse is a novel by Virginia Woolf. A novel set on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920, it skilfully manipulates temporal and psychological elements.... - 1928 Radclyffe HallRadclyffe HallRadclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness.- Life :...
's The Well of LonelinessThe Well of LonelinessThe Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" is apparent from an early age... - 1929 Thomas WolfeThomas WolfeThomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
's Look Homeward, AngelLook Homeward, AngelLook Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life is a 1929 novel by Thomas Wolfe. It is Wolfe's first novel, and is considered a highly autobiographical American Bildungsroman. The character of Eugene Gant is generally believed to be a depiction of Wolfe himself. The novel covers the span of time... - 1936 George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
's Keep the Aspidistra FlyingKeep the Aspidistra FlyingKeep the Aspidistra Flying, first published 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. It is set in 1930s London. The main theme is Gordon Comstock's romantic ambition to defy worship of the money-god and status, and the dismal life that results.... - 1939 John FanteJohn FanteJohn Fante was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter of Italian descent. He is perhaps best known for his work, Ask the Dust, a semi-autobiograpical novel about life in and around Los Angeles, California, which was the third in a series of four novels, published between 1938...
's "Ask the DustAsk the DustAsk the Dust is the most popular novel of Italian-American author John Fante, first published in 1939 and set during the Great Depression-era in Los Angeles. It is one of a series of novels featuring the character Arturo Bandini as Fante's alter ego, a young Italian-American from Colorado...
" - 1945 Richard WrightRichard Wright (author)Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
's Black BoyBlack BoyBlack Boy is an autobiography by Richard Wright. The author explores his childhood and race relations in the South. Wright eventually moves to Chicago, where he establishes his writing career and becomes involved with the Communist Party.... - 1961 Irving StoneIrving StoneIrving Stone was an American writer known for his biographical novels of famous historical personalities, including Lust for Life, a biographical novel about the life of Vincent van Gogh, and The Agony and the Ecstasy, a biographical novel about Michelangelo.-Biography:In...
's The Agony and the Ecstasy - 1970 Patrick WhitePatrick WhitePatrick Victor Martindale White , an Australian author, is widely regarded as an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative...
's The VivisectorThe VivisectorThe Vivisector is the eighth published novel by Patrick White, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. First published in 1970, it details the lifelong creative journey of fictional artist/painter Hurtle Duffield... - 1971 Alice MunroAlice MunroAlice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...
's "Lives of Girls and WomenLives of Girls and WomenLives of Girls and Women is a short story cycle by Alice Munro, published by McGraw-Hill Ryerson in 1971. All of the stories chronicle the life of a single character, Del Jordan, and the book has been characterized as a novel by some critics as a result....
" - 1972 Chaim PotokChaim PotokChaim Potok was an American Jewish author and rabbi. Potok is most famous for his first book The Chosen, a 1967 novel which was listed on The New York Times’ best seller list for 39 weeks and sold more than 3,400,000 copies.-Biography :Herman Harold Potok was born in The Bronx, New York City, to...
's My Name is Asher LevMy Name Is Asher LevMy Name Is Asher Lev is a novel by Chaim Potok, an American author and rabbi. The book's protagonist is Asher Lev, a Hasidic Jewish boy in New York City. Asher is a loner with artistic inclinations. His art, however, causes conflicts with his family and other members of his community... - 1973 Milan KunderaMilan KunderaMilan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...
's Life Is ElsewhereLife Is ElsewhereLife Is Elsewhere is a Czech-language novel by Milan Kundera published in 1973.The setting for Life Is Elsewhere is Czechoslovakia before, during, and after the Second World War, and tells the story of Jaromil, a character who dedicates his life to poetry.... - 1974 Margaret LaurenceMargaret LaurenceJean Margaret Laurence, CC was a Canadian novelist and short story writer, one of the major figures in Canadian literature.- Early years :...
's The DivinersThe DivinersThe Diviners is a novel by Margaret Laurence. Published by McClelland & Stewart in 1974, it was Laurence's final novel, and is considered one of the classics of Canadian literature.... - 1988 Margaret AtwoodMargaret AtwoodMargaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
's Cat's EyeCat's Eye (novel)Cat's Eye is a 1988 novel by Margaret Atwood. In it, controversial painter Elaine Risley vividly reflects on her childhood and teenage years... - 2006 Alison BechdelAlison BechdelAlison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally best known for the long-running comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For, in 2006 she became a best-selling and critically acclaimed author with her graphic memoir Fun Home.-Early life:...
's Fun HomeFun HomeFun Home is a 2006 graphic memoir by American writer Alison Bechdel, author of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. It chronicles the author's childhood and youth in rural Pennsylvania, USA, focusing on her complex relationship with her father... - 2010 Eileen MylesEileen MylesEileen Myles is an American poet who has also worked in fiction, non-fiction, and theater.She won a 2010 Shelley Memorial Award.-Early life and career:...
's Inferno (A Poet's Novel) - 2010 Wena PoonWena PoonWena Poon is a lawyer and novelist based in the United States. She writes English-language fiction.-Biography:Poon began writing fiction in her early teens and studied English literature. She refused to enroll in any creative writing classes. She obtained her degrees in English literature and law....
's "Alex y Robert", the Asian American Künstlerroman
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair Gray is a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years...
's Lanark: A Life in Four Books consists of four books arranged in the order 3, 1, 2, 4; books 1 and 2 constituting a Künstlerroman. In John Dos Passos
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos was an American novelist and artist.-Early life:Born in Chicago, Illinois, Dos Passos was the illegitimate son of John Randolph Dos Passos , a distinguished lawyer of Madeiran Portuguese descent, and Lucy Addison Sprigg Madison of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Dos Passos...
' U.S.A. trilogy
U.S.A. trilogy
The U.S.A. Trilogy is a major work of American writer John Dos Passos, comprising the novels The 42nd Parallel ; 1919, also known as Nineteen Nineteen ; and The Big Money . The three books were first published together in a single volume titled U.S.A by Harcourt Brace in January, 1938...
, the Camera Eye sections add up to a modernist
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
autobiographical
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
Künstlerroman. John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...
's Lost in the Funhouse
Lost in the Funhouse
Lost in the Funhouse is a collection of loosely connected short stories that was originally published by John Barth in 1968. These postmodern stories examine the art of fiction writing, among other things, and seem to undermine the conventional and predictable nature of fiction...
is a collection of short stories that are often read as a postmodernist
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
Künstlerroman.
In Italian
- Gavino LeddaGavino LeddaGavino Ledda is an author and a scholar of the Italian language and of Sardinian. He is best known for his autobiographical work Padre padrone .-Early life:...
's My Father, My Master
In Icelandic
- Halldór LaxnessHalldór LaxnessHalldór Kiljan Laxness was a twentieth-century Icelandic writer. Throughout his career Laxness wrote poetry, newspaper articles, plays, travelogues, short stories, and novels...
's World Light
In Russian
- Vladimir NabokovVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
's The Gift - 2011 Pavel Kostin's It's Time (Время Пришло)
In Croatian:
- Miroslav KrležaMiroslav KrležaMiroslav Krleža was a leading Croatian and Yugoslav writer and the dominant figure in cultural life of both Yugoslav states, the Kingdom and the Republic . He has often been proclaimed the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century.-Biography:Miroslav Krleža was born in Zagreb, modern-day...
's The Return of Filip Latinovicz