Liminality and the Short Story

Jochen Achilles is Professor of American Studies at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany. His authored book publications include a study on the development of Sean O'Casey's plays in the context of modern drama and a book on the interface between the gothic tradition and psychological fiction, focusing on Sheridan Le Fanu. His most recent book publications are co-edited volumes on representations of evil in fiction and film (2009) and on liminal anthropologies (2012).

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 innovative collection 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. It focuses on both the liminality of the short story and on liminality in the short story.

Part I: Liminality and the Short Story 1.1 Uses of Liminality 1. "Betwixt and Between": Boundary Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Short Fiction Jochen Achilles and Ina Bergmann Part II: The Liminality of the Short Story 2.1 Conceptualizations of Liminality 2. Modes of Liminality in American Short Fiction: Condensations of Multiple Identities Jochen Achilles 3. Liminal and Liminoid Discourses in Modernist Women's Short Fiction: Performance, Spectatorship, and Cinema Claire Drewery 4. In the Generic Interzone: On the Liminal Character of William S. Burroughs's Routines Florian Zappe 2.2 Methods of Approach 5. Cognitive Liminality: On the Epistemology of the Short Story Michael Basseler 6. Experiencing Short Stories: A Cognitive Approach Focusing on Reading Narrative Space Renate Brosch 7. Between Story and Essay: Micro-Markers of Storyness Susan Lohafer 2.3 Conditions of Publication 8. "Small Tales": Brevity and Liminality in Early American Magazines Oliver Scheiding 9. The Liminal Spaces of Hawthorne's Short Story Cycles: Rites of Passage in History and Story-Telling Alfred Bendixen 10. Variety in Unity, Unity in Variety: The Liminal Space of the American Short Story Anthology Kasia Boddy Part III: Liminality in the Short Story 3.1 Contexts of Writing 11. "I Have Heard Many Stranger Stories than This, in the Villages Along the Hudson": Magic Realism in Upstate New York Ina Bergmann 12. Madness as a Liminal State in the American Short Story: Edgar Allan Poe's Ratiocination and Charles Sanders Peirce's Logic of Abduction Susanne Rohr 13. Of Death, Dying, and Disease: The Short Story and American Heterotopian Illness Narratives Carmen Birkle 14. How Significant Food Can Make a Short Story into a Meal: The Hyphenated Immigrant Experience in Contemporary American Short Fiction Jeff Birkenstein 3.2 Topics of Liminality 15. Liminal Subjects, Mixed Genre: Richard Wright and the African American Short Story Glenda R. Carpio 16. "I am not that": Liminality in the Writings of Joanna Russ Paul March-Russell 17. "Almost Like a Ghost": Spectral Figures in Alice Munro's Short Fiction Ailsa Cox 18. Liminality, Metamorphic Experience, and the Short Story Form: Alice Munro's "Wenlock Edge" Katherine Orr 19. Indigenous Interstitial Spaces: Liminality in Thomas King's "Borders" Evelyn P. Mayer