Intertextual Bildungs Relations between Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and Dickens’s Great Expectations A Puzzle Novel or a Bildungsroman

Abstract

This thesis studies the history of the genre of the Bildungsroman, and the main characteristics of the Victorian and the American variant. It shortly studies intertextuality as a tool to influence the meaning of a text. Subsequently, it will examine and analyse Tartt’s use of intertextuality in the The Goldfinch to detect how Great Expectations influences the meaning of Tartt’s text and/or her authorial message. The research is limited to the comparison of the narratical Bildungs structures, the description and analysis of the overarching structures and the comparison of Tartt’s Barbour family to Dickens’s Pocket family.