Finding self in literary fiction

This study investigates the role of literary fiction and in particular the Bildungsroman for narrative identity construction. It emphasizes the consumption of its fans, as one can say that they are the most devoted consumers. The results of in-depth interviews with 10 international respondents demonstrate that the consumption of the Bildungsroman by its fans is a form of narrative practices. The consumption of the Bildungsroman as a form of narrative practices is based on three integral concepts. The first implies embodied reading (a potential subcategory of embodied cultural capital), which refers to potential effects of experiencing literary fiction. The second concept is the narratable self, which emphasizes the idea that one cannot narrate the self just individually, but that we also need the other in order to get a full image of who we are and what we can be. The third concept is narrative identity construction, which in this case entails the construction of the self, (partly) based on the subjective experience of fiction. In other words, this study demonstrates that the consumption of fiction has potential effects on narrative identity construction.