Os anos de aprendizado de Wilhelm Meister: “Um magnífico arco-íris” na história do romance

Abstract

This essays focus on Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship as the founding work of the most significant German contribution to the history of the European novel: the so-called “formation and development novel” (Bildungs- und Entwicklungsroman). The discussion on some specificities of this subgenre leads to commentaries on the influence that Goethe’s travels through Italy, between September 1786 and April 1788, exerted on the re-elaboration of the original project as presented in the manuscript Wilhelm Meister’s Theatrical Mission, written between 1777 and 1785. Finally, some considerations are made on the ensuing reverberations of the Goethe’s paradigm on writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.