SOURCE: "Jules Vallès: Education and the Novel," in Gedenkschrift for Victor Poznanski, edited by C. A. M. Noble, Peter Lang, 1981, pp. 129-46.

In the following essay, Birchall considers Vallès's trilogy Jacques Vingtras in relation to the German literary tradition of the bildungsroman, or educational novel. Birchall suggests that Vallès reworks the traditional bildungsroman by yoking together individual growth and social tranformation.

Novels, wrote Dr. Johnson, 'are written chiefly for the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct and introductions into life.'¹ The connection between education and the novel can be traced back over more than two centuries. The emergence of the novel as a major literary genre, and the development of modern educational theory are contemporaneous processes in European thought, and can be located in common sources: the problematic relation of individual and society, and the greater...