This volume focuses on the highly topical problem of the border, which resonates with the zeitgeist and is investigated principally from a perspective of both literary and cultural studies. On the one hand, literary manifestations and conceptualizations of the border as a wide-ranging figure of thought and category of reflection are targeted here. On the other hand, phenomena, discourses, and narratives are explored that reveal themselves as salient reflections of our age overshadowed by various constraints, limitations, and enclosures. The studies extends from the ancient explorations of the border motif, through Romantic poetics of restriction and dissolution, to the most recent German-language literary production.