Reviewed by:

• Falling Short: The Bildungsroman and the Crisis of Self-Fashioning by Aleksandar Stević
• Julianne Guillard

At the time of publication of Aleksandar Stević’s Falling Short: The Bildungsroman and the Crisis of Self-Fashioning, and, indeed, at the time of the review of this scholarship, the world was enveloped by an historic, global pandemic. Modernity faced a critical reckoning not seen in generations; no warfare or terrorism, nor climate change effect, has yet had as sustained or unique an impact on members of the public as COVID-19’s devastation. Why should I start this review with this acknowledgement? Notably, I both read Stević’s book and write this review from inside an existence now tainted from the social effects of this epidemic. There is no way to capture an understanding of art, or media itself, without a careful consideration of the society from which it came. And here is Stević’s most brilliant point: this is a book about a genre that never was (185).

The bildungsroman has been bedeviled by scholars for its inconsistencies and essentialized by its audiences as a ‘coming of age’ plot for its protagonist. Stević sharpens such discordant and rudimentary understandings of the genre by framing his work on the European nineteenth-century bildungsroman as a take on the protagonists’ failed socialization during a time of widespread social upheaval. More specifically, he considers the protagonists’ development within a context of revolutions, war, and industrial and technological innovations, which impacted an individual’s integration into society. It is among this upheaval that Stevic views the protagonist as a failure because an ever-changing, “modern” society has an ever-changing view of maturation. And so, with this definition of bildungsroman as our foundation, we begin Falling Short in every analysis of the genre. The opening of the book previews the close readings to come; chapters dedicated to key nineteenth-century texts that both affirm and challenge Stević’s hypothesis “that the defeat of the aspiring hero tends to reveal a broader crisis in the very assumptions that govern the processes of individual development and social integration” (2). Anticipating his audience’s questions about the “defeat” of our main character within his view of modern society, Stevic effectively answers by a considerate review of both major and minor scholarship on the bildungsroman.

Stević is quick to reference his trainings in both history and literature as the backbone of his thesis, and rightly so. His careful close readings of both scholarship and original texts mesh well with engaging prose that provides insight into the societies that gave rise to those works of literature (e.g., Balzac, Brontë, Butler, Dickens, James, Joyce, Proust). From this, we learn that within the construct of the long nineteenth century’s bildungsroman, the protagonist isn’t the crux of the novel; nor is his or her development truly at the center of the story. Rather, the bildungsroman is a genre about the complex modern society that crafted this individual—and, as such, the impossibility of the individual’s development. In each snapshot of modern society, successful development becomes a moving target that is impossible for our heroes to reach. Stević’s conceptualization of an entire genre as a failed genre, or a genre about failures, is enjoyable. Specifically, he notes in the opening sentences of Falling Short that the nineteenth century’s myopic focus on protagonists’ unachievable socialization results in “inverted and frustrated” narrative development (1). A yoke of literary criticism seems to have been lifted by way of this interpretation. The author points his audience to the understanding that, while failure is rife in childhood and adulthood, the bildungsroman is built upon the shaky foundation that success over failure is at the heart of the genre. We, as an audience, fall short of fully grasping the genre’s effects by our reluctance to take [End Page 203] a wider view of the stories told within a particular society at a specific time in history. It is these historical contexts...

审核人：

• 落空：Aleksandar Stević 的成长小说和自我时尚的危机
• 朱丽安·吉拉德

在 Aleksandar Stević 的《Falling Short: The Bildungsroman and the Crisis of Self-Fashioning》出版时，事实上，在审查这项奖学金的时候，世界被一场历史性的全球大流行所笼罩。现代性面临着几代人从未见过的批判性思考；没有战争或恐怖主义，也没有气候变化影响，对公众产生了像 COVID-19 的破坏那样持续或独特的影响。我为什么要以这个确认开始这次审查？值得注意的是，我读过史蒂维奇的书，并在一个现在受到这种流行病的社会影响的存在中写下这篇评论。如果不仔细考虑它来自的社会，就无法理解对艺术或媒体本身的理解。这是 Stević 最精彩的一点：这是一本关于从未有过的流派的书 (185)。

成长小说因其前后矛盾而受到学者的困扰，并被观众认为是主人公的“成年”情节。Stević 将他关于 19 世纪欧洲成长小说的作品塑造成对主人公在广泛的社会动荡时期失败的社会化的看法，从而加深了对这种类型的不和谐和基本的理解。更具体地说，他在革命、战争、工业和技术创新的背景下考虑了主角的发展，这影响了个人融入社会。正是在这场剧变中，Stevic 将主角视为失败者，因为不断变化的“现代”社会对成熟的看法不断变化。因此，以这种成长小说的定义为基础，我们开始未能达到在体裁的每一个分析。本书的开篇预示着即将到来的细读；致力于 19 世纪关键文本的章节，这些文本既肯定又挑战了 Stević 的假设，“有抱负的英雄的失败往往会揭示在控制个人发展和社会融合过程的假设中存在更广泛的危机”（2）。在他对现代社会的看法中，他预见到观众关于我们的主角“失败”的问题，Stevic 通过对成长小说的主要和次要学术研究的体贴审查，有效地回答了这个问题。 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

Stević 很快将他在历史和文学方面的训练作为他论文的支柱，这是正确的。他对学术和原始文本的仔细阅读与引人入胜的散文相吻合，这些散文提供了对产生这些文学作品的社会的洞察力（例如，巴尔扎克、勃朗特、巴特勒、狄更斯、詹姆斯、乔伊斯、普鲁斯特）。从中我们了解到，在漫长的 19 世纪成长小说的结构中，主角并不是小说的关键；他或她的发展也不是故事的中心。相反，成长小说是一种关于塑造这个人的复杂现代社会的流派——因此，个人发展的不可能。在现代社会的每一个快照中，成功的发展成为我们英雄无法达到的移动目标。Stević 将整个流派概念化为一个失败的流派，或者一个关于失败的流派，是令人愉快的。具体来说，他在开头的句子中指出未能达到十九世纪的近视专注于主角无法实现社会成果‘倒受挫’的叙事发展（1）。通过这种解释，文学批评的枷锁似乎已被解除。作者向他的观众指出，虽然失败在童年和成年时期很普遍，但成长小说建立在摇摇欲坠的基础之上，即成功战胜失败是该类型的核心。我们作为观众，由于不愿[End Page 203]更广泛地了解特定历史时期特定社会中所讲述的故事，因此未能完全掌握该类型的影响。正是这些历史背景……