Chapter 12 introduces Goethe’s two Wilhelm Meister novels. It problematises the notion of the Bildungsroman which is often assigned to the first novel, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship), and proposes that the two novels exemplify the four modes proposed by Northrop Frye: satire, irony and comedy in the case of the Lehrjahre, and, in the case of the sequel, Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meisters Journeyman Years), romance. The chapter argues that the supposed disjunctions within and between the two novels are in fact part of their unifying principle.