The limits of national form : normativity and performativity in Bildungsroman criticism -- Apprenticeship of the novel : Goethe and the invention of history -- Epigonal consciousness : Stendhal, Immermann, and the "problem of generations" around 1830 -- Long-distance fantasies : Freytag, Eliot, and national literature in the age of empire -- Urban vernaculars : Joyce, Döblin, and the "individuating rhythm" of modernity -- Conclusion : apocalipsis cum figuris : Thomas Mann and the Bildungsroman at the ends of time.
