Border Crossings

Crossing borders, breaking boundaries, going beyond the limits, entering new territories - today these take many forms and are major preoccupations of our world. Whether the borders are real or imagined, historical or contemporary, physical or psychological, they continue to fascinate us. The twenty-two chapters in this book explore the phenomenon of border crossing in some of its manifold forms. The chapters range across a wide spectrum of border crossings from the ages of chivalry, Dante, Shakespeare and Darwin, through to the era of comics, world music, transcultural writing, mash-up novels, and digital libraries. Studies of life writing, the performing arts, language, history, migration and literature all contribute to the exploration of the central theme and open up for readers some of the many ways in which border crossings inform and revitalise our lives.