E.Th.A. Hoffmann’s Kater Murr and the tradition of the Bildungsroman

Abstract

The publication of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795/96) consolidated the Bildungsroman as a novelistic genre, which would come to occupy a dominant position in the literary system of the Kunstperiode. The importance of this novel for Romantic writers is evidenced by the critical discussion it provoked and, especially, by the number of novels they wrote in response to the Goethean model. E. Th. A. Hoffmann’s (1776-1822) Kater Murr (1819/1821) questions the basis of the Bildungsroman’s narrative scheme, opposing both the prototype of the genre and the romantic reformulations. Therefore, it can be seen as signalling the end of a stage in the evolution of the German novel.