Novel of Personal Development and Formation
The idea of Bildungsromanor the novel of personal development and formation is often exemplified in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship.) Bildungsroman is normally translated “novel of education,” though in German Bildungcan also mean “formation” as in formation of a sentence.
If we choose the idea of formation rather than of education, formation implies something of a molding or sculpting process, a forcing into a shape which will eventually harden. Molding suggests more of the sense of something being poured into a mold, that something then taking on the antitype shape of the mold and hardening. Sculpting has more the sense of pressures artistically applied to gradually transform the shape, as in the picture of the potter shaping or sculpting a bowl or pitcher out of a lump of clay.
These very different pictures of formation suggest that our vocabulary for study of the novel needs considerable refinement.
With such refinement, we can ask, for example whether Anna and the King of Siam (or the movie equivalent, The King and I) is a novel of molding or a novel of sculpting and shaping with reference to the King of Siam and his kingdom. Our answer might be quite different from our answer whether Anna is also being educated, whether she is being molded or rather being sculpted by her unique experience as political advisor and teacher of the king’s children. For both the King and for Anna, Bilbung is clearly not exclusively for the young, though in the novel and the movie, the king’s children and particularly the crown prince provide their own theme of education.
A more recent cinematic example of contrastive shapings or sculptings is found in the related artistic endeavors of two masterworkers in Green Book. Neither Tony Vallelonga nor Dr. Don Shirley are moldable; they are too much themselves to be poured into any mold. But Vallelonga is the greatest bullshitter in the Bronx, and Shirley is an internationally acclaimed, virtuoso performer of the Kennedy era. Stuck with each other for a two-month tour of the South, both fashion, shape, and sculpt what each must see as unpromising clay in the other.