The Innovation in the Bildungsroman in British Literature

Abstract

The bildungsroman is one of the richest bodies of literature in Anglo-Saxon culture, flourishing from the Victorian era until nowadays. Cawelti’s concepts of formula, invention and convention helps decode the ways in which two very important novels of the type Great Expectations and Neverwhere demarked themselves from such a vast number of other novels dealing with the same subject as well as investigating the cultural significance of such narratives. The comparative analysis aims to convey the unnecessary nature of the division of highbrow and lowbrow literature as the comparison was able to demonstrate how a canonical and popular work were able to affect a whole genre. The dissertation reaches this goal by comparing the two texts in a block format by using as criteria how they are placed in the invention/convention spectrum and determining whether they bring any cultural addition to the genre. according to the meanings produced from the analysis both works despite coming from different classification brought various inventions to the bildungsroman as wells as reinventing the formula and made it stay relevant in contemporary times.