{"product_id":"the-way-of-the-world-the-bildungsroman-in-european-culture-9781859842980","title":"The Way of the World: The Bildungsroman in European Culture","description":"Wilhelm Meister, Elizabeth Bennet, Julien Sorel, Rastignac, Jane Eyre, Bazaroz, Dorothea Brooke ... the golden age of the European novel discovers a new collective protagonist: youth. It is problematic and restless youth--\"strange\" characters, as their own creators often say--arising from the downfall of traditional societies. But even more than that, youth is the symbolic figure for European modernity: that sudden mix of great expectations and lost illusions that the bourgeois world learns to \"read\", and to accept, as if it were a novel. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World\u003c\/i\u003e, with its unique combination of narrative theory and social history, interprets the \u003ci\u003eBildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e as the great cultural mediator of nineteenth-century Europe: a form which explores the many strange compromises between revolution and restoration, economic take-off and aesthetic pleasure, individual autonomy and social normality. This new edition includes an additional final chapter on the collapse of the \u003ci\u003eBildungsroman\u003c\/i\u003e in the years around the First World War (a crisis which opened the way for modernist experiments), and a new preface in which the author looks back at \u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World\u003c\/i\u003e in the light of his more recent work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFranco Moretti\u003c\/b\u003e teaches English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eSigns Taken for Wonders\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Way of the World\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eModern Epic\u003c\/i\u003e, all from Verso.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Verso","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50475942052114,"sku":"9781859842980","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_18d4e536-e1a5-4099-9426-030a6cf4ad9e.jpg?v=1730241065","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-way-of-the-world-the-bildungsroman-in-european-culture-9781859842980","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}