Principle and Propensity: Experience and Religion in the Nineteenth-Century British and American Bildungsroman

Reimagining the coming-of-age literary tradition in the U.S. and U.K. within dynamic theological contexts

Scholars have traditionally relied upon the assumption that the nineteenth-century bildungsroman in the Goethean tradition is an intrinsically secular genre exclusive to Europe, incompatible with the literature of a democratically based culture. By combining intellectual history with genre criticism, Principle and Propensity provides a critical reassessment of the bildungsroman, beginnin...