Initiation novel

The term initiation novel describes a type of novel in which decisive events in the life of a child or adolescent are depicted, which confront the protagonist for the first time with aspects of adult life, for example with evil, sexuality, the gender issue, senselessness, life-threatening or fragile ideals. In response, the protagonist goes through various stages of coping with these experiences: from shock and disenchantment to the struggle for answers to what disillusion him, what threatens to fail or what he has achieved. As a rule, in this phase of personal maturation, the young person gains greater insight into the complexity and ambivalence of adult life.

Deviating from the concept of initiation , which particularly describes the ritual admission of adolescents into the adult world, the ritual or a solemn admission into the circle of adults rarely play a central role in the initiation novel. Rather, it is an often precarious transition to adulthood or the farewell to childhood.

The terms development novel and initiation novel are closely related, the latter being characterized by the fact that the puberty phase is particularly in focus and thus the structure of the novel comprises a significantly shorter developmental phase. If the stage of life shown is mainly limited to adolescence, the term adolescence novel is common.

Origin of the name

The stories of initiation already formed a special type of American short stories at the beginning of the 20th century . Examples include prose texts by Sherwood Anderson : I Want to Know Why (1919), Ernest Hemingway : Indian Camp (1924); The Killers (1927) or Katherine Mansfield : The Garden Party (1922).

Later coming-of-age stories such as The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951) or The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1964) became more important.

The term initiation novel was used in the late 1990s by the Polish literary historian Przemysław Czapliński , who characterized it as "narration about maturation, process of growing-up, about loss of innocence and entering the stage of sin and experience".

Examples

Typical examples of initiation or adolescence novels are:

Robert Musil - The confusions of the pupil Törless, 1906, title page

• The confusions of the pupil Törless ( Robert Musil , 1906)
• The Secret Garden ( Frances Hodgson Burnett , 1911)
• The Catcher in the Rye ( JD Salinger , 1951)
• The Bell Jar ( Sylvia Plath , 1964)
• Krabat ( Otfried Preußler , 1971)
• Harry Potter ( Joanne K. Rowling , 1997-2007)
• The middle of the world ( Andreas Steinhöfel , 1998)
• At the shorter end of Sonnenallee ( Thomas Brussig , 1999)
• Crazy (novel) ( Benjamin Lebert , 1999)
• Shard Park ( Alina Bronsky , 2008)
• Tschick ( Wolfgang Herrndorf , 2010)
• Once upon a time there was Indian land (novel) ( Nils Mohl , 2011)
• Young man (novel) ( Wolf Haas , 2018)

literature

• Hadassah Stichnothe: The initiation novel in German and English-language children's literature (=  studies on European children's and youth literature ). 1st edition. University Press Winter, Heidelberg 2017.
• Bill Trusiewicz: Harry Potter and the Path of Initiation. 2015, accessed November 30, 2018 . 
• Vito Paoletić: The adolescent novel today: a challenge for young and old . Ed .: Alpen-Adria-Universität. Klagenfurt 2017, p. 93-108 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heinrich Kaulen: Youth and adolescence novels between modern and postmodern. 1999, accessed November 30, 2018 . 
2. ^ Lyman Baker (Kansas State University): Critical Concepts. Initiation story. 2001, accessed November 30, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Tetyana Garasym: Initiation Novel VS Bildungsroman: Common and Distinct features. 2012, p. 183 , accessed on November 29, 2018 (English).