Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Introduction: Border(ing)s in Contemporary Short Stories of the British Isles

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story

Abstract

Border phenomena and border imaginaries have invited critical attention for some time, but this book focuses on the various ways in which the contemporary short story mirrors, questions and engages with border issues. The introduction sketches relevant research traditions in interdisciplinary border studies and in short story studies, pointing out that the concept of the border, as well as neighbouring notions such as liminality and intersectionality, illuminate the short story’s special aesthetic potential. The introduction concludes with a survey of the collection’s chapters, which explore the semantic richness of borders in a wide range of twenty-first-century short story writing.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 99.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Works Cited

  • Achilles, Jochen, and Ina Bergmann, eds. 2015. Liminality and the Short Story. Border Crossings in American, Canadian, and British Writing. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baldwin, Dean. 2016. “The Understated Art. English Style.” In The Cambridge History of the English Short Story, edited by Dominic Head, 235–251. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Balibar, Étienne. 2017. “Reinventing the Stranger: Walls All Over the World, and How to Tear Them Down.” symplokē 25 (1–2): 25–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnes, Julian. 1996. Cross Channel. London: Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowen, Elizabeth. 1986. The Mulberry Tree: Writings of Elizabeth Bowen, edited by Hermione Lee. London: Virago.

    Google Scholar 

  • Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. 2002. “Eveline Visitant.” In At Chrighton Abbey and Other Horror Stories, 111–122. London: Wildside Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brambilla, Chiara, Jussi Laine, James W. Scott, and Gianluca Bocchi, eds. 2015. Borderscaping: Imaginations and Practices of Border Making. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeWald, Rebecca, and Dorette Sobolewski, eds. 2011. Bonds and Borders. Identity, Imagination and Transformation in Literature. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diener, Alexander C., and Joshua Hagen. 2012. Borders: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, Amelia. 1989. “The Phantom Coach.” In The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, edited by Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert, 13–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Einhaus, Ann-Marie, ed. 2016. The Cambridge Companion to the English Short Story. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gardini, Nicola, et al., eds. 2017. Minding Borders. Resilient Divisions in Literature, the Body and the Academy. Cambridge: Legenda.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanson, Clare. 1989. Short Stories and Short Fictions 1880 to 1980. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Head, Dominic. 1992. The Modernist Short Story: A Study in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———, ed. 2016. The Cambridge History of the English Short Story. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunter, Adrian. 2007. The Cambridge Introduction to the Short Story in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kay, Jackie. n.d. “A Writer’s View.” Thresholds. Accessed March 25, 2019. http://thresholds.chi.ac.uk/a-writers-view/.

  • Kassabova, Kapka. 2016. “Breach Review: Short Stories Exploring the Refugee Crisis.” Guardian, July 29. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/29/breach-by-olumide-popoola-annie-holmes-review-short-stories-refugees.

  • Khair, Tabish. 2016. The New Xenophobia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kipling, Rudyard. 1990. “Beyond the Pale.” In Plain Tales from the Hills, 162–167. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krueger, Kate. 2014. British Women Writers and the Short Story, 1850–1930: Reclaiming Social Space. London: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liggins, Emma, Andrew Maunder, and Ruth Robbins. 2011. The British Short Story. London: Palgrave.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • MacLaverty, Bernard. 1999. “Walking the Dog.” In Walking the Dog and Other Stories, 3–12. London: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mansfield, Katherine. 1967. “The Voyage.” In The Penguin Book of English Short Stories, edited by Christopher Dolley, 224–232. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Manzanas, Ana Mª, ed. 2007. “Border Dynamics: From Terminus to Terminator.” In Border Transits: Literature and Culture Across the Line, edited by Ana Mª Manzanas, 9–33. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall, Tim. 2018. Divided: Why We Are Living in an Age of Walls. London: Elliott and Thompson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo, Walter. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mukherji, Subha. 2013 [2011]. Thinking on Thresholds: The Poetics of Transitive Spaces. London: Anthem Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, David. 2006. “The Lines That Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our ‘Borderless World’.” Progress in Human Geography 30 (2): 1–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Connor, Frank. 1962. The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story. London: Melville House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popescu, Gabriel. 2012. Bordering and Ordering in the Twenty-First Century: Understanding Borders. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Popoola, Olumide, and Annie Holmes. 2016. Breach. London: Peirene Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rainsford, Dominic. 2002. Literature, Identity and the English Channel: Narrow Seas Expanded. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosello, Mireille, and Stephen F. Wolfe. 2017. “Introduction.” In Border Aesthetics: Concepts and Intersections, edited by Johan Schimanski and Stephen F. Wolfe, 1–4. New York: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rumford, Chris. 2006. “Theorizing Borders.” European Journal of Social Theory 9 (2): 155–169.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2012. “Towards a Multiperspectival Study of Borders.” Geopolitics 17 (4): 887–902.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schimanski, Johan, and Stephen F. Wolfe, eds. 2007. Border Poetics De-limited. Hannover: Wehrhahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. Border Aesthetics. Concepts and Intersections. New York: Berghahn.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Victor. 1966. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vaughan-Williams, Nick. 2009. Border Politics: The Limits of Sovereign Power. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Viljoen, Hein, ed. 2013. Crossing Borders, Dissolving Boundaries. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • West-Pavlov, Russell, Justus Mahoka, and Jennifer Wawrzinek, eds. 2012. Border-Crossings: Narrative and Demarcation in Postcolonial Literature and Media. Heidelberg: Winter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Thomas M., and Hastings Donnan, eds. 2012. A Companion to Border Studies. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Woolf, Virginia. 1916. “Hours in a Library.” Times Literary Supplement, November 30: 565–566.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1985. “The Mark on the Wall.” In The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf, edited by Susan Dick, 83–89. London: The Hogarth Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1992. A Room of One’s Own. Oxford: World’s Classics.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1994. The Letters of Virginia Woolf IV, edited by Nigel Nicholson. London: The Hogarth Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. English Department, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Barbara Korte

  2. University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez

Authors
  1. Barbara Korte
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Barbara Korte .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. English Department, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Barbara Korte

  2. University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

    Laura Mª Lojo-Rodríguez

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Korte, B., Lojo-Rodríguez, L.M. (2019). Introduction: Border(ing)s in Contemporary Short Stories of the British Isles. In: Korte, B., Lojo-Rodríguez, L. (eds) Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30359-4_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation