By examining the works of George Eliot, Carlyle, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, George Meredith, George Gissing, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, and D.H. Lawrence, as well as several post-World War II novels, Argyle explores the Goethean ideal of Bildung and the Bildungsroman (self-culture and the apprenticeship novel), Heinrich Heine's anti-philistinism, music, the Tübingen higher criticism, Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's philosophies, Prussianism, and avant-garde culture in the Weimar Republic. To establish the status of these allusions in the public conversation, Argyle moves between literary and extra-literary contexts, including biographical material about the authors as well as information from contemporary literary works, periodical articles, and other documentation that indicates the understanding authors could assume from their readers. Her methodology combines theories of allusion and intertextuality with reception theory.