SOURCE: Swales, Martin. “Irony and the Novel: Reflections on the German Bildungsroman.” In Reflection and Action: Essays on the Bildungsroman, edited by James N. Hardin, pp. 46-68. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Swales examines the Bildungsroman genre, particularly its use of irony, contending that the genre is a vital part of the European novel tradition, with a palpable legacy in the twentieth-century novel.

At one point in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado the ruler of Japan shares with the audience his vision of a judicial system in which there would be perfect consonance between punishment and crime.¹ The crimes which he chooses as test cases seem mercifully lightweight—which contrasts engagingly with the ghoulishness of the proposed remedies. One criminal who provokes the Mikado's ire is the bore, and it is decreed that he be condemned to listen to

A series of sermons...