{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021621621621621623, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.541176470588235, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Of Ends and Endings: Teleological and Variational Models of Romantic Narrative

This essay sketches the antithesis between a teleological and a variational model of development (Bildung) in nineteenth‐century thought, with a particular focus on narrative. I argue that, in the course of that century, the initially dynamic logic of Bildung is gradually vanquished by an institutional model that shifts away from Goethe's contingent, open‐ended logic of development and towards a notion of Bildung as the virtual and soon canonical property of information.