Borges, Language and Reality

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. Introduction: Borges, or the Geography of Sentience

   • Alfonso J. García-Osuna

   Pages 1-13

3. Borges and the Third Man: Toward an Interpretation of ‘Unánime noche’ in “The Circular Ruins”

   • José Luis Fernández

   Pages 15-32

4. Borges and Nietzschean Ethics: Another Branch of Fantastic Literature?

   • Cesar Rivera

   Pages 33-50

5. Ireneo Funes: Superman or Failure? A Husserlian Analysis

   • Ethan Rubin

   Pages 51-61

6. Contradictory Rhetoric: Disassembling “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote”

   • Patricia Reagan

   Pages 63-76

7. Meetings of Anger: Borges on Metaphor

   • David Ben-Merre

   Pages 77-85

8. Borges, Lorca and Jung as Labyrinth Makers

   • Salvatore Poeta

   Pages 87-102

9. The Tlönian Cone

   • Fredy R. Zypman

   Pages 103-111

10. Incomplete Works: Borges’ Literary Idealism

    • Alejandro Riberi

    Pages 113-122

11. Borges, Ethics, and Evil

    • Donald Shaw

    Pages 123-131

12. Back Matter

    Pages 133-145

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This book brings together the work of several scholars to shed light on the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges' complex relationship with language and reality. A critical assumption driving the work is that there is, as Jaime Alazraki has put it, 'a genuine effort to overcome the narrowness that Western tradition has imposed as a master and measure of reality' in Borges' writing. That narrowness is in large measure a consequence of the chronic influence of positivist approaches to reality that rely on empirical evidence for any authentication of what is 'real'. This study shows that, in opposition to such restrictions, Borges saw in fiction, in literature, the most viable means of discussing reality in a pragmatic manner. Moreover, by scrutinising several of the author's works, it establishes signposts for considering the truly complicated relationship that Borges had with reality, one that intimately associates the 'real' with human perception,insight and language.

• Materialism
• Physics
• Mathematics
• Sociology
• Latin American Literature
• literary diction
• postmodern literature

• Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA

  Alfonso J. García-Osuna

Alfonso J. García-Osuna (Ph.D. 1989, The City University of New York, USA) is the author of several books and articles on Spanish and Latin American Literature. An avid cyclist, he has completed the Pilgrimage Road to Santiago seven times.

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