How to Use bildungsroman in a Sentence

bildungsroman

noun

• Not even a bildungsroman can avoid the shadow of the 45th president.
  — Elsa Keslassy, Variety, 18 May 2022
• The poet and novelist Ben Lerner’s treatment of the sport in this moody bildungsroman is a must-hit.
  — Bo Seo, The Atlantic, 1 June 2022
• Aside from being a phenomenal bildungsroman, the novel stands the test of time.
  — Usa Today Staff, USA TODAY, 27 Sep. 2021
• Her growth as a writer resembles a bildungsroman just on its own; readers wondered, on the edge of their seats, what her next piece would be.
  — Ian Frazier, The New Yorker, 18 June 2021
• The Back to the Future trilogy is an '80s version of a bildungsroman about a teenager who has to learn that there's much more to life than being, well, a teenager.
  — Ruth Johnson, EW.com, 18 Jan. 2023
• Diana was, through the media, living a bildungsroman in real time.
  — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 24 Aug. 2017
• Then a fifty-five-page bildungsroman written in short sections with boldface titles.
  — Adam Dalva, The New Yorker, 15 July 2021
• Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater is a new kind of bildungsroman.
  — Josephine Livingstone, The New Republic, 1 Mar. 2018
• For the past five years, Srinivasan has been living a Silicon Valley bildungsroman.
  — Anthony Lydgate, WIRED, 6 Sep. 2022
• This artist’s bildungsroman has enough on its hands wrestling with complex questions about art-making, integrity and the ethics of ambition.
  — Kate Greathead, New York Times, 4 May 2018
• The episode unfolds like an incestuous bildungsroman (a coming-of-age saga).
  — Josh St. Clair, Men's Health, 12 Sep. 2022
• Although this classic bildungsroman may have been nipped and tucked in the transition from page to screen, in terms of scale and sweep and emotion, little appears to have been lost in translation.
  — Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 5 May 2023
• Philbrick’s story, which reads like a bildungsroman gone terribly wrong, renewed attention on a murky practice in the art world.
  — Victoria Bekiempis, Rolling Stone, 23 May 2022
• There isn’t much Gen X toughness on display here, and Daum’s detours into bildungsroman don’t enhance her critique of the modern left.
  — Rosa Brooks, Washington Post, 24 Oct. 2019
• At this point, isotopes in Fred’s tusks began recording a mastodon bildungsroman of sorts, as the animal struggled to come to terms with onrushing adulthood.
  — Peter Brannen, The Atlantic, 22 June 2022
• Science fiction, fantasy is a youth-loving tradition, the bildungsroman, the origin story of the young farm boy or farm girl who’s finding their way.
  — Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge, 15 July 2019
• The book, with its high-tide-low-tide rhythm of hope and disillusionment, is a bildungsroman mapped onto a political career.
  — Katy Waldman, Slate Magazine, 29 Sep. 2017
• Now imagine that the novel systematically subverts the swelling arc of the bildungsroman—that, on the cusp of each achievement, some ghostly hand pulls our hero back from victory.
  — James Wood, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2019
• After establishing the conflicts and desires of the adults, the narrative becomes a bildungsroman.
  — Angela Flournoy, New York Times, 2 Jan. 2018
• Ijeoma has structured the seminar like a bildungsroman.
  — BostonGlobe.com, 24 Mar. 2021
• Other aspects of the virus’s unfolding bildungsroman, however, are much harder to forecast, or even get an initial read on.
  — Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic, 28 June 2021
• But in Craig’s hands, it’s become something far more nuanced and interesting than mere bildungsroman anyway.
  — Ej Dickson, Rolling Stone, 27 Apr. 2023
• Though he’s written across a broad range of genres, from bildungsroman to zombie novel, Whitehead is above all a writer of historical fiction.
  — Evan Kindley, The New Republic, 1 Aug. 2023
• This isn’t just another multiverse slogfest but a bildungsroman.
  — Maya Phillips, New York Times, 1 June 2023
• Sayan’s is the kind of story America loves, a bildungsroman of possibility.
  — Eric Boodman, STAT, 24 Nov. 2020
• Hemingway first came to light as a short story writer, which featured the rugged outdoor exploits and bildungsroman of Nick Adams, his recurring alter-ego, who lived, fished, and loved in Northern Michigan.
  — Will Jeakle, Forbes, 4 Apr. 2021
• Her pages feel as full as a 19th-century bildungsroman, with collapsing kingdoms, sailing ships and elaborate schemes.
  — Ron Charles, Washington Post, 6 June 2023
• When Bran, the protagonist of this offbeat bildungsroman, is ten years old, her mother joins a Buddhist colony, abandoning her to the dubious care of her common-law stepfather.
  — The New Yorker, 13 June 2022
• With the help of blankly matter-of-fact yet omniscient voice-over narration (spoken by Madeleine James), D’Ambrose achieves the span and the depth of a cinematic bildungsroman in shards of experience and epigrammatic flickers.
  — Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2022
• Youth is the plaything of the novel—certainly of the bildungsroman, with its lost illusions and great expectations, and of the midlife novel, whose characters cast off the shackles of adulthood to claim the symbolic passions of an earlier age.
  — Merve Emre, The New Yorker, 7 Sep. 2020

Last Updated: 17 Jul 2024