Borges, between History and Eternity
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- $34.99
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- $34.99
Publisher Description
That Borges is one of the key figures in 20th-century literature is beyond debate. The reasons behind this claim, however, are a matter of contention. In Latin America he is read as someone who reorganized the canon, questioned literary hierarchies, and redefined the role of marginal literatures. On the other hand, in the rest of the world, most readers (and dictionaries) tend to identify the adjective "Borgesian" with intricate metaphysical puzzles and labyrinthine speculations of universal reach, completely detached from particular traditions. One reading is context-saturated, while the other is context-deprived. Oddly enough, these "institutional" and "transcendental" approaches have not been pitched against each other in a critical way. Borges, between History and Eternity brings these perspectives together by considering key aspects of Borges's work-the reciprocal determinations of politics, philosophy and literature; the simultaneously confining and emancipating nature of language; and the incipient program for a literature of the Americas.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this reworking of the literary legacy of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, D az, Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University, navigates two conflicting views of his subject: the position that frames Borges as "a writer utterly detached from reality, dealing in abstractions, literary puzzles, and unsolvable philosophical riddles," and the one that frames him as "an overtly political writer." D az favors a chiasmic approach. That is, he argues that there's much historical engagement in Borges's mysticism and much mysticism in his historical engagement. D az also analyses how two American writers, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, figure into Borges's opus, which mingles the symbolist strain of Poe with Whitman's humanist poetics. The book contends, further, that North American writers like Pynchon and Barth "got their own canon back, filtered through and transformed by Borges," and that one logical step for scholars to take would be to investigate Borges's influence in the United States, particularly on science fiction. The arena of Borges criticism is a crowded firmament and some of its stars are very dim indeed; by mediating two hardline critical positions, D az's book adds to the luster and depth of the field.
