Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years

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"Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, oder Die Entsagenden" ("Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years, or the Renunciants"; sometimes translated, less accurately, as "Wilhelm Meister's Travels, or the Renunciants"), is the fourth novel by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and the sequel to the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship), published in 1795. Though initially conceived during the 1790's, the first edition did not appear until 1821, and the second edition - differing substantially from the first - in 1829.

The novel was greeted by mixed reviews in the 1820's, and did not gain full critical attention until the mid-20th Century. Consisting largely of, for example, discrete novellas interwoven with the main narrative, along with elements of the epistolary novel, lengthy sections of aphorisms, and a few interspersed poems, the structure of this novel challenged the novel form as commonly practiced at the time of its publication.

A major theme running through the various parts of the novel is that of Entsagung, translatable as "renunciation." The most famous section of the novel is probably the episode in which the protagonist and his son Felix visit the "Pedagogical Province."