The Graveyard in Literature

Liminality and Social Critique

Edited By: Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh

From £32.99

This volume explores how cultural texts use the graveyard as a liminal space to challenge social values and articulate new perspectives. Immersed between life and death, where traditional certainties are suspended, new models for human interaction can be formulated.

This volume focuses on literary and other cultural texts that use the graveyard as a liminal space within which received narratives and social values can…

This volume focuses on literary and other cultural texts that use the graveyard as a liminal space within which received narratives and social values can be challenged, and new and empowering perspectives on the present articulated. It argues that such texts do so primarily by immersing the reader in a liminal space, between life and death, where traditional certainties such as time and space are suspended and new models of human interaction can thus be formulated. Essays in this volume examine the use of liminality as a vehicle for social critique, paying particular attention to the ways in which liminal spaces facilitate the construction of alternative perspectives.

Dr Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh is a Lecturer in Literature and Cultural Studies at Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. She has published work in the areas of Irish literature, American literature and cultural studies. In March 2019, she delivered the Annual W.A. Emmerson Lecture on behalf of the Irish Association for American Studies on the subject of “Liminal Spaces and Contested Histories in the Novels of Juan Rulfo and George Saunders”. She is on the review board of The Raymond Carver Review and Messages, Sages and Ages, and served as guest editor of a volume of the latter on “Intercultural Conversations.

Ayesha Latif, Lucia Toman, Sandra Leonard, Annelies Augustyns, Danielle Peloquin, Fiona Fearon, Jayson Althofer, Matthew Grinder, Róisín McDermott, Christopher Cusack, Steve Danziger, Setara Pracha, Anne Burke-Erickson, Brittany Reid, Taylor Mckee, Dominic Nah, Gayathrii Nathan, Benjamin Chew, Kubra Vural Özbey, Marine Galiné, John Singleton, Basundhara Chakraborty, Micheline Hilpert, Amanda Estevez, Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh