Liminal encounters between literature and music in contemporary british women’s short stories

Abstract

This chapter examines how the short story offers a fertile ground not just for the depiction of the crossing of national, ethnic and cultural boundaries, but also for the challenge to the barriers traditionally dividing different arts and discourses. It aims to approach liminality as the overlapping of artistic boundaries, articulated in terms of the cross-fertilisation between the short story and music. These interartistic encounters are analysed in a selection of stories by contemporary British female writers that explore gender relationships through the musical referent. By doing so, the chapter addresses the implications of the intersection between gender and genre in the liminal space of the short story.