The Bildungsroman, or "novel of formation," has long led a paradoxical life within literary studies, having been construed both as a peculiarly German genre, a marker of that country's cultural difference from Western Europe, and as a universal expression of modernity. In Formative Fictions, Tobias Boes argues that the dual status of the Bildungsroman renders this novelistic form an elegant way to negotiate the diverging critical discourses surrounding national and world literature. Since the late eighteenth century, authors have employed the story of a protagonist's journey into maturity as a powerful tool with which to facilitate the creation of national communities among their readers. Such attempts always stumble over what Boes calls "cosmopolitan remainders," identity claims that resist nationalism's aim for closure in the normative regime of the nation-state. These cosmopolitan remainders are responsible for the curiously hesitant endings of so many novels of formation. In Formative Fictions, Boes presents readings of a number of novels—Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Karl Leberecht Immermann's The Epigones, Gustav Freytag's Debit and Credit, Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus among them—that have always been felt to be particularly "German" and compares them with novels by such authors as George Eliot and James Joyce to show that what seem to be markers of national particularity can productively be read as topics of world literature.

The Bildungsroman, or "novel of formation," has long led a paradoxical life within literary studies, having been construed both as a peculiarly German genre, a marker of that country's cultural difference from Western Europe, and as a universal expression of modernity. In Formative Fictions, Tobias Boes argues that the dual status of the Bildungsroman renders this novelistic form an elegant way to negotiate the diverging critical discourses surrounding national and world literature. Since the late eighteenth century, authors have employed the story of a protagonist's journey into maturity as a powerful tool with which to facilitate the creation of national communities among their readers. Such attempts always stumble over what Boes calls "cosmopolitan remainders," identity claims that resist nationalism's aim for closure in the normative regime of the nation-state. These cosmopolitan remainders are responsible for the curiously hesitant endings of so many novels of formation. In Formative Fictions, Boes presents readings of a number of novels-Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Karl Leberecht Immermann's The Epigones, Gustav Freytag's Debit and Credit, Alfred Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus among them-that have always been felt to be particularly "German" and compares them with novels by such authors as George Eliot and James Joyce to show that what seem to be markers of national particularity can productively be read as topics of world literature.

Discusses writers such as Poul Anderson, Brian W. Aldiss, Isaac Asimov, J.G. Ballard, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Anthony Boucher, Ray Bradbury, Algis Budrys, Edgar Rice Burroughs, John W. Campbell, Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Samuel R. Delany, Lester del Rey, Philip K. Dick, Gordon R. Dickson, Thomas Disch, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Randall Garrett, Robert A. Heinlein, Zenna Henderson, Frank Herbert, Damon Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Ursula K. Le Guin, Murray Leinster, Anne McCaffrey, Judith Merril, A. Merritt, Walter M. Miller Jr., Michael Moorcock, Andre Norton, Alexei Panshin, H. Beam Piper, Frederik Pohl, Joanna Russ, Robert Silverberg, Clifford D. Simak, Cordwainer Smith, E.E. "Doc" Smith, Norman Spinrad, Theodore Sturgeon, Jack Vance, A.E. van Vogt, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Wollheim, RogerZelazny, Jack Williamson, and others.

How to Do Things with Fictions considers how fictional works, ranging from Chaucer to Beckett, subject readers to a series of exercises meant to fortify their mental capacities.

For success in school and life, students need more than proficiency in academic subjects and good scores on tests; those goals should form the floor, not the ceiling, of their education. To truly thrive, students need to develop attributes that aren’t typically measured on standardized tests. In this lively, engaging book by veteran school leader Thomas R. Hoerr, educators will learn how to foster the “Formative Five” success skills that today’s students need, including • Empathy: learning to see the world through others’ perspectives. • Self-control: cultivating the abilities to focus and delay self-gratification. • Integrity: recognizing right from wrong and practicing ethical behavior. • Embracing diversity: recognizing and appreciating human differences. • Grit: persevering in the face of challenge. When educators engage students in understanding and developing these five skills, they change mindsets and raise expectations for student learning. As an added benefit, they see significant improvements in school and classroom culture. With specific suggestions and strategies, The Formative Five will help teachers, principals, and anyone else who has a stake in education prepare their students—and themselves—for a future in which the only constant will be change.

This book brings together researchers with cognitive-scientific and literary backgrounds to present innovative research in all three variations on the possible interactions between literary studies and cognitive science. The tripartite structure of the volume reflects a more ambitious conception of what cognitive approaches to literature are and could be than is usually encountered, and thus aims both to map out and to advance the field. The first section corresponds to what most people think of as "cognitive poetics" or "cognitive literary studies": the study of literature by literary scholars drawing on cognitive-scientific methods, findings, and/or debates to yield insights into literature. The second section demonstrates that literary scholars needn't only make use of cognitive science to study literature, but can also, in a reciprocally interdisciplinary manner, use a cognitively informed perspective on literature to offer benefits back to the cognitive sciences. Finally, the third section, "literature in cognitive science", showcases some of the ways in which literature can be a stimulating object of study and a fertile testing ground for theories and models, not only to literary scholars but also to cognitive scientists, who here engage with some key questions in cognitive literary studies with the benefit of their in-depth scientific knowledge and training.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Spiders on Drugs: A Prologue -- Introduction: Minding Characters -- 1 Patterns of Cognitive Dissonance -- 2 Two Child Narrators -- 3 Madness between Violence and Insight -- 4 A Strange Mood -- 5 Tales of Rats and Pigs -- 6 Obsessive Narrators, Unstable Knowledge -- Coda: Uses of the Character- Centered Illusion -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index