LAUSR

Modernity faced a critical reckoning not seen in generations;no warfare or terrorism, nor climate change effect, has yet had as sustained or unique an impact on members of the public as COVID-19’s devastation. The opening of the book previews the close readings to come;chapters dedicated to key nineteenth-century texts that both affirm and challenge Stević’s hypothesis “that the defeat of the aspiring hero tends to reveal a broader crisis in the very assumptions that govern the processes of individual development and social integration” (2). The author points his audience to the understanding that, while failure is rife in childhood and adulthood, the bildungsroman is built upon the shaky foundation that success over failure is at the heart of the genre.