A Study Of Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet And Breath From The Perspective Of Bildungsroman

Tim Winton is one of the most outstanding writers in the Australian literary world.He has won four times Australian highest literary award—Miles Franklin Literary Awards,and enjoys a reputation of "child prodigy".Cloudstreet and Breath are two of Winton’s masterpieces,winning the Miles Franklin Awards in 1992 and2009,both of which focus on the ordinary people in small towns and their daily lives.Especially,these two works involve the issue of adolescent growth which reflects author’s attention to the Australian adolescent’s growing plight,meanwhile highlights the author’s humanistic feelings.This thesis attempts to interpret two of Tim Winton’s novels Cloudstreet and Breath from the perspective of Bildungsroman,with the intention of making more readers realize Winton’s concern on teenagers’ growth by analyzing the teenage protagonists in these two novels,at the same time revealing the difficulties encountered in the growing process and exploring its practical significance.This thesis mainly analyzes the growth theme and the difficult growing process of protagonists through content,characters and the structure of novels.This thesis consists of three parts: introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction includes four aspects,first,the author’s life and works;secondly,brief introduction of Cloudstreet and Breath,as well as domestic and foreign research summary of these two novels;thirdly,introduction of the origin,development and application of the Bildungsroman in literature;fourthly,the structure of this thesis.The main body of this thesis includes three chapters,the first chapter analyzes the growth theme from the content of novels.It explores the protagonists’ pursuit and confusion of identity in the growing process in these two novels,and their finally epiphanies and returns after all kinds of conflicts.The second chapter analyzes the characters of two novels in light of Bildungsroman which generally are divided into positive initiation guides,negative initiation guides and initiation companions.They play an important role in protagonists’ growth and witness their growing journey.The third chapter analyzes the novels from their structure.The Bildungsroman is characteristic of formulated plot pattern,open ending and different narrative point of views.The final part of this thesis is the conclusion.This thesis analyzes the difficult growing process of the young protagonists and their perception of the growth in two novels to explore the growth theme,reveals the problems in contemporary adolescent’s growth,meanwhile bears practical significance.In addition,this paper also intends to make more readers realize Tim Winton’s concern for teenagers’ growth issue and his humanistic feelings.