La via delle ombre. Educazioni moderne e postmoderne nei romanzi di formazione

The relationship between the 20th century and the 18th -19th centuries classical Bildung, is complex and multi-faceted. The paper highlights the historical context which made possible a radical rethinking of the concept's validity throughout the 20th century; then, it focuses on the analysis of the formative paths described in a modernist novel (Federigo Tozzi’s “Eyes Shut”) and in a postmodern one (Roberto Bolaño’s “By Night in Chile”). Against this backdrop, the paper aims at underlying the different attitudes the two authors showed regarding the validity of Bildung as an educative process for the humankind.