Building identity within and beyond the urban background: Three Brothers by Peter Ackroyd as a bildungsroman

This thesis aims to disclose the formation of an individual identity as a process encompassing various experiences among which is the urban experience determining the building and assertion of 'identity'. Relaying on the most recent theories of psychogeography, the present thesis studies the interconnectedness between the individual mind and the urban background as a means of formative principle in constructing an individual identity. Although identity is viewed as eroded and indefinable in postmodernism, psychogeography endeavours to discover if the territory in which an individual located affects the mood and/or attitude of the individual in means of a search for the identity. In this study, Peter Ackroyd's Three Brothers, as a postmodern Bildungsroman, is analysed through the framework of psychogeography and the analysis indicates that there is an evident relationship with the identity and the urban background. This paper contributes to recent debates in the literature on identity and its indefinability concerning the postmodern thoughts by offering a new perspective. Keywords: Bildungsroman, Identity, Peter Ackroyd, Postmodernism, Psychogeography