The catcher in the rye genres
I intend to carry out a corpus study on The Catcher in the Rye as I believe that it is in fact the lexis which gives this novel its Bildungsroman status and not the overall narrative. Achariyopas (2012, p.2) describes Salinger’s novel as an ‘entire story to adolescent subject matter concerning a teenage hero’s behaviour towards the norms of American society of the 1940s’. Hardin (cited by Millard, p.3) states that ‘there is no consensus on the meaning of the term Bildungsroman’, suggesting that it is too broadly used. Even the protagonist himself refers to this genre, stating that his story will not be like any ‘David Copperfield kind of crap’ (Salinger, p. Previous Research According to the Oxford Dictionary of English (2010, p.164), the term ‘Bildungrsoman’ refers to ‘A novel dealing with one’s formative years or spiritual education.’ The Catcher in the Rye is commonly identified as part of this genre, however in my opinion, the protagonist Holden Caulfield fails to develop as an individual and attempts to resist the inevitability and ‘phoniness’ of adult life. I will summarise my most interesting findings below. In my analysis I expect to find an extensive amount of negative adjectives, a semantic field of the adult world (potentially used out of context) and various words in relation to the ‘typical’ coming of age themes of romance/sexuality, transformation, depression or sadness and selfhood. The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, could be described as an anti-hero and my hypothesis is that it is Holden’s negative attitude to the world around him which appeals to the teenage audience and that his formative process will be demonstrated by his discovery of the adult world and his wish to escape it. These aspects have equally drawn as much fascination to the novel as they have disapproval. Since its first publication in 1951 the novel has been interpreted by many as controversial, due to its frank discussion of sexuality, taboo language, post-war themes and the undermining of social order, resulting in censorship and banning of the novel in school districts in the American states Florida, Ohio, Washington and Michigan. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1994) has become a modern classic within the ‘coming of age’/Bildungsroman genre.