Liminality and the Short Story: Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing

This book studies the short story, one of the most widely taught genres in English literature, through a methodological lens that is less often applied: liminality, the idea of thresholds, transitions and in-between states. It looks at both the concept and the genre, and at how the two relate.

Liminal structure is central to the short story, the book argues. Its brevity and episodic form lend themselves to scenes of transition, brief flashes of crisis or choice, and room for moral transgression and ambivalent self-reflection. The collection also considers the short story cycle and the relevance of the concept for it.

The approach matters beyond literature, given current interest in global mobility, digital networking and transnational identity. The book is part of the Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature series. Routledge published it in 2019 as a first edition.ISBN-13: 9780367869304.