The Drama of Peripheralized Bildung: An Irish Genre Study

Despite the renewed interest in the genre of the Bildungsroman generated by postcolonial and minority literature, accounts of its evolution remain centered on the novel. This article seeks to expand the methodological framework for analyzing the global circulation of literary genres by tracing lines of influence between the Bildungsroman and dramatic narratives of Bildung. The article argues that the case study of modern Irish literature often dispenses with traditional guarantors of Bildung unavailable to Ireland's youth, like ample time and freedom of movement, forwarding instead narratives of rapid development that unfold on the stage rather than in novel form. Far from an anomaly, the Irish Bildungsdrama furnishes a formal solution to a model of development incommensurable with the temporal and spatial conditions of the periphery. By tracing the co-constitutive genres of the Irish Bildungsroman and Bildungsdrama, the article also challenges generically sequestered and unidirectional models of world literature, instead regarding the periphery as a site of cross-generic literary innovation.