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<p> In Formative Fictions Tobias Boes seeks a new perspective on the perennial topic of the Bildungsroman, to relieve it of its traditional understanding as a national form, sometimes regarded as peculiar to Germany. Boes places the form in a context of increasing historical awareness and finds cosmopolitan sensibilities between nationalism and individualism that, drawing on Homi Bhabha's 'vernacular cosmopolitanism, ' allow comparisons of texts across literatures. -Jeffrey L. Sammons, Leavenworth Professor Emeritus of German Language and Literature, Yale University

In Formative Fictions Tobias Boes seeks a new perspective on the perennial topic of the Bildungsroman, to relieve it of its traditional understanding as a national form, sometimes regarded as peculiar to Germany. Boes places the form in a context of increasing historical awareness and finds cosmopolitan sensibilities between nationalism and individualism that, drawing on Homi Bhabha's 'vernacular cosmopolitanism, allow comparisons of texts across literatures. Jeffrey L. Sammons, Leavenworth Professor Emeritus of German Language and Literature, Yale University

"""By reinserting less well-studied German examples into a history of the genre, Boes resists turning plots into theoretical self-descriptions. His approach allows the genre the freedom of its individual solutions... Boes remains true to the incipient insight that he has unearthed in Morgenstern.""-Nicholas Dames, Modern Language Quarterly (September 2014) ""Formative Fictions should appeal to multiple academic audiences. Anyone interested in the genre of the Bildungsroman will want to read Tobias Boes's work. What elevates the book above individual genre studies, however, is its effort to redefine comparative literature as world literature. Boes does this in a very careful way, steering between the Scylla of nationalist essentialism and the Charybdis of an empty universalism. That is, he recognizes the importance of national and linguistic difference, but demonstrates how the national is caught between the global and the local, how the cosmopolitan can coincide with the national, and how the novels express the 'synchronicity of the non-synchronous' in the societies from which they emerged.""-Todd Kontje, University of California, San Diego ""In Formative Fictions Tobias Boes seeks a new perspective on the perennial topic of the Bildungsroman, to relieve it of its traditional understanding as a national form, sometimes regarded as peculiar to Germany. Boes places the form in a context of increasing historical awareness and finds cosmopolitan sensibilities between nationalism and individualism that, drawing on Homi Bhabha's 'vernacular cosmopolitanism,' allow comparisons of texts across literatures.""-Jeffrey L. Sammons, Leavenworth Professor Emeritus of German Language and Literature, Yale University"

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Tobias Boes is Assistant Professor of German at the University of Notre Dame.

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