Negotiating issues of initiation, conformation, apprenticeship (not only in the narrow pedagogical sense but with the wider sense of knowledge that is experience or that of the attempt to integrate the young hero into different environments), divided between two traditions, that of individualism and that of “socialization”, reconciliation with the self and the world, showing the multiple spaces of friction or even conflicts leading to one direction or another (school, family, study, work, art, love and love relationships), and especially closely linked to the rise of the bourgeoisie, the apprenticeship novel has almost come to be identified with the story of the novel in general.
It is a special kind of novel, which is inaugurated throughout Europea with the Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1795-6), which presents a tremendous tradition in individual national literatures and a prominent representation in Greek (G. Theotokas, M. Lyberakis, Terzakis, L. Nakou, P. Prevelakis and others).
We will look at such narratives unfold the problems of adolescence and youth, observing heroes that in the time span of these novels gradually become by adolescent teenagers and in the end, having reached the threshold of adult life, are ready to live their own novel. The end of these novels therefore marks a new beginning, the entry into (adult) life. What happens, however, when adulthood stays stubbornly in brackets? What kind of shelter can the art or the aesthetics provide to such teenagers in modern times in modern fictional versions of the genre where the ideological-political foundations have collapsed?
We will also look at such works that may be part of extended circles, but allow us to see that the modern limits of youth have shifted or enlarged, and in particular offer the opportunity of a first acquaintance with modern writers.