Analysis Of Bakhtin's Bildungsroman

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The literary theorist Michail Bakhtin worked with the classification of genres according to how the image of the main hero is constructed. According to him, the principle of formulating the hero figure is related to the particular type of plot, to the particular conception of the world and to a particular composition of a novel
Indeed, a striking element of the Bakhtinian theory is the emergence of the protagonist in the context of time and space: emerging here as a result of the entirely changing life circumstances and events. The emergence of man’s life-destiny fuses with the emergence of man himself. The presence of this emerging theme is most intriguing when considering it is traced altogether within a novel with educational and biographical themes found under the principle idea of the man’s essential becoming known as Bildungroman.
Moreover, how would we analyse a novel in the framework of Bildungsroman? What kind of main themes will we single out by applying this approach? Why is such a novel like David Copperfield considered to be a classic Bildungsroman type?
Moreover, one might want to examine how time and space are interconnected in the novel: we may wonder how the idea of chronotope of time and space is developed in the novel: if we trace major and minor chronotopes in the novel, which are the dominant ones, can we single out the only one for the whole novel? Also, how do time and space influence the process of emergence of the protagonist?
Furthermore, may one speak about the expansion of space and time along the lines of Bildungsroman? How would we trace the concepts of expansion? In which way are they developed?
We will focus on what we call novel of education - and the purpose of the essay will be that, to...

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... his development in all four dimensions which gives us a new retrospective of not only the novel but the position of the author himself behind the main protagonist. Chronotopes create a map of coordinates with which we can trace the trajectory of the shaping of the identity of the main hero and catch the shadow of the author through the autobiographical theme in the novel. The trajectory fully depends on the chronotopes used within the whole novel, as chronotopes establish the relationship between the fictional world and the hero. Hence the chronotopic approach to reading helps not only to define and compare literary genres but also establish the connection between the main hero and the author, the world of narrative and the hero, and the reader and the author. In that, "we cannot help but be strongly impressed by the representational importance of the chronotope".

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