Chapter 2 - The Picaresque Novel
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship II–VI
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2020
Summary
Although the relationship between the Apprenticeship and the tradition of the picaresque novel has never been studied in depth, numerous critics have nonetheless recognized picaresque elements in the Apprenticeship. Hans Reiss, for example, notes while discussing the characters of Goethe’s novel that “most … do not substantially differ from those of the conventional picaresque novel to which they originally belonged,” and Enright sees picaresque elements of plot besides:
The novel appears to be firmly set upon its picaresque path: the company moves from theatre to theatre (instead of from inn to inn), it meets with successes and failures, new people join it from time to time and we are regaled with their biographies, and the actors are even attacked by highwaymen and robbed of their clothes, like Joseph Andrews. All the ingredients of the once popular novel are there: even those characters of mysterious origin and gloomy past who are to struggle under a load of obscure guilt and painful eccentricity right up to the last chapter.
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- Goethe and the Myth of the BildungsromanRethinking the <I>Wilhelm Meister</I> Novels, pp. 24 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020