Bildungsspiele: Vicissitudes of socialization in Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship
Abstract
This essay scrutinizes the narrative logic of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
(1796), widely regarded as the most paradigmatic instance of the European Bildungsroman.
Of particular concern is whether the formal and psychological self-organization of
Goethe's narrative and its protagonist can still be articulated as an entelechy, that
is, as a manifestation of a teleological framework whose (ontological) authority is
absolute and independent of its fulfilment by a specific narrative. Focusing on the
ubiquity of "play" (Spiel) throughout the novel, this essay concludes that, appearances
notwithstanding, the Aristotelian/Thomist framework is no longer operative in Goethe's
novel. Rather, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship - herein differing from Goethe's botanical
writings of the same period - presents us with an emergentist rather than teleological
model of narrative rationality, that is, a progression that is neither predictable
nor susceptible of repetition. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23487Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1080/10509585.2010.499006Publication Info
Pfau, T (2010). Bildungsspiele: Vicissitudes of socialization in Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship.
European Romantic Review, 21(5). pp. 567-587. 10.1080/10509585.2010.499006. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/23487.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Thomas Pfau
Alice Mary Baldwin Distinguished Professor of English
"THOMAS PFAU (PhD 1989, SUNY Buffalo) is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English,
with a secondary appointment in the Divinity School at Duke University. He has published
some fifty essays on literary, philosophical, and theological subjects ranging from
the 18ththrough the early 20th century. In addition to two translations, of Hölderlin
and Schelling (SUNY Press, 1987 and 1994), he has also edited seven essay co

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