ABSTRACT
This book is a study of the short story, one of the widest taught genres in English literature, from an innovative methodological perspective. Both liminality and the short story are well-researched phenomena, but the combination of both is not frequent. This book discusses the relevance of the concept of liminality for the short story genre and for short story cycles, emphasizing theoretical perspectives, methodological relevance and applicability.
Liminality as a concept of demarcation and mediation between different processual stages, spatial complexes, and inner states is of obvious importance in an age of global mobility, digital networking, and interethnic transnationality. Over the last decade, many symposia, exhibitions, art, and publications have been produced which thematize liminality, covering a wide range of disciplines including literary, geographical, psychological and ethnicity studies.
Liminal structuring is an essential aspect of the aesthetic composition of short stories and the cultural messages they convey. On account of its very brevity and episodic structure, the generic liminality of the short story privileges the depiction of transitional situations and fleeting moments of crisis or decision. It also addresses the moral transgressions, heterotopic orders, and forms of ambivalent self-reflection negotiated within the short story's confines. This innovative collection focuses on both the liminality of the short story and on liminality in the short story.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |31 pages
Liminality and the Short Story
chapter |29 pages
“Betwixt and Between”
part |124 pages
The Liminality of the Short Story
part |42 pages
Conceptualizations of Liminality
chapter |13 pages
Liminal and Liminoid Discourses in Modernist Women's Short Fiction
chapter |12 pages
In the Generic Interzone
part |43 pages
Methods of Approach
chapter |16 pages
Experiencing Short Stories
part |38 pages
Conditions of Publication
chapter |11 pages
The Liminal Spaces of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Short-Story Cycles
chapter |12 pages
Variety in Unity, Unity in Variety
part |117 pages
Liminality in the Short Story
part |53 pages
Contexts of Writing
chapter |16 pages
“I Have Heard Many Stranger Stories Than This, in the Villages Along the Hudson”
chapter |11 pages
Madness as a Liminal State in the American Short Story
chapter |12 pages
Of Death, Dying, and Disease
chapter |12 pages
How Significant Food Can Make a Short Story into a Meal
part |63 pages
Topics of Liminality