Kunstlerroman

Knstlerroman , (German: artists novel), class of

Bildungsroman, or apprenticeship novel, that deals
with the youth and development of an individual who
becomesor is on the threshold of becominga
painter, musician, or poet. The classic example is James
Joyces Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).
The type originated in the period of German
Romanticism with Ludwig Tiecks Franz Sternbalds
Wanderungen (1798; Franz Sternbalds Wanderings).
Later examples are Knut Hamsuns Hunger (1890) and
Thomas Wolfes Look Homeward, Angel (1929). Unlike
many Bildungsroman, where the hero often dreams of
becoming a great artist but settles for being a mere
useful citizen, the Knstlerroman usually ends on a
note of arrogant rejection of the commonplace life.
A Portrait is a key example of the Knstlerroman (an
artist's bildungsroman) in English literature. Joyce's
novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical
awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to
question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish
conventions he has been brought up in. He finally
 leaves for Paris to pursue his calling as an artist. The
work pioneers some of Joyce's modernist techniques
that would later come to fruition in Ulysses and
Finnegans Wake. The Modern Library ranked Portrait as
the third greatest English-language novel of the
twentieth century.