Godine učenja i sloma Ivice Kičmanovića: U registraturi Ante Kovačića i žanr Bildungsromana
IVICA KIČMANOVIĆ’S YEARS OF LEARNING AND YEARS OF BREAKDOWN: ANTE KOVAČIĆ’S IN THE ARCHIVES AND THE GENRE OF BILDUNGSROMAN

Summary/Abstract: Bearing in mind a problematic historical and contemporary reception of Kovačić’s novel In the Archives (U registraturi), the paper discusses its complex aesthetics from a rarely applied interpretative perspective. A series of parallels with Europe’s most famous educational novel, Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education (Émile, ou De l’éducation), reveal a strong relation with the Bildungsroman, in wider sense of the term. Narration about education and a lifelong upbringing of the protagonist bears traces of Romanticism and Enlightenment, but the most important aspects of the novel are defined by realist aesthetics, and harbinger modernist procedures and topics (narrative duration and order, psychological depth, illness, trauma, etc.). In this context, it is argued that In the Archives is an anti-educational modernist novel, which testifies to the epochal clash between the individual desire and social praxis, i.e. to a continuous impossibility to realise a stable existence and liberated humanity, which is the key paradigm of the Bildungsroman.

• Details
• Contents