The Making of Jorge Luis Borges as an Argentine Cultural Icon


Book Description

Jorge Luis Borges is, undeniably, Argentina's best-known and most influential writer. In addition to scholarly studies of his work, his emblematic figure continues to appear on book covers and carrier bags, in biographies, plaques and statues, photographs and interviews, as well as cartoons and city tours. The Making of Jorge Luis Borges as an Argentine Cultural Icon argues that the ideas and expectations that Argentine people have placed upon the author - thus constructing the icon - are also those that allow them to define their cultural identity. The book examines these intertwined processes by analysing the image of Borges in biographies, photographs, comic strips and urban spaces and the socio-political, historical and cultural contexts in which they were produced. The study seeks not to reveal a Borgesian essence but, rather, to expose the complexity of the ongoing mechanisms which construct Borges the icon. Despite the vast amount of biographical and critical work about the writer that has been produced in Argentina and abroad, The Making of Jorge Luis Borges as an Argentine Cultural Icon is the first in-depth, comprehensive examination of the construction of the author as an Argentine cultural icon.




The Making of Jorge Luis Borges as an Argentine Cultural Icon


Book Description

This study uncovers the complexity of the operations that constitute the definition of Argentine cultural identity through Borges.







The Making of Jorge Luis Borges as an Argentine Cultural Icon


Book Description

Jorge Luis Borges is, undeniably, Argentina's best-known and most influential writer. In addition to scholarly studies of his work, his emblematic figure continues to appear on book covers and carrier bags, in biographies, plaques and statues, photographs and interviews, as well as cartoons and city tours. The Making of Jorge Luis Borges as an Argentine Cultural Icon argues that the ideas and expectations that Argentine people have placed upon the author - thus constructing the icon - are also those that allow them to define their cultural identity. The book examines these intertwined processes by analysing the image of Borges in biographies, photographs, comic strips and urban spaces and the socio-political, historical and cultural contexts in which they were produced. The study seeks not to reveal a Borgesian essence but, rather, to expose the complexity of the ongoing mechanisms which construct Borges the icon. Despite the vast amount of biographical and critical work about the writer that has been produced in Argentina and abroad, The Making of Jorge Luis Borges as an Argentine Cultural Icon is the first in-depth, comprehensive examination of the construction of the author as an Argentine cultural icon.




Spiritual Homelands


Book Description

Homeland, Exile, Imagined Homelands are features of the modern experience and relate to the cultural and historical dilemmas of loss, nostalgia, utopia, travel, longing, and are central for Jews and others. This book is an exploration into a world of boundary crossings and of desired places and alternate identities, into a world of adopted kin and invented allegiances.




The Oxford Handbook of Jorge Luis Borges


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Jorge Luis Borges contextualizes the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges's work for a new generation of twenty-first-century readers and critics. Most known for his creative fictions that tackle literary questions of authorship as well as more philosophical notions such as multiverse theory, Borges has captivated scholars from a variety of disciplines since his emergence on the international scene. This volume shifts the emphasis to Borges's working life, his writing processes, his collaborations and networks, and the political and cultural background of his production. It also evaluates his impact on a variety of other fields ranging from political science and philosophy to media studies and mathematics.




The Borges Enigma


Book Description

Borges once stated that he had never created a character: 'It's always me, subtly disguised'. This book focuses on the ways in which Borges uses events and experiences from his own life, in order to demonstrate how they become the principal structuring motifs of his work. It aims to show how these experiences, despite being 'heavily disguised', are crucial components of some of Borges's most canonical short stories, particularly from the famous collections Ficciones and El Aleph. Exploring the rich tapestry of symmetries, doubles and allusions and the roles played by translation and the figure of the creator, the book provides new readings of these stories, revealing their hidden personal, emotional and spiritual dimensions. These insights shed fresh light on Borges's supreme literary craftsmanship and the intimate puzzles of his fictions.




Burning Down the House


Book Description

Burning Down the House explores the political, economic and cultural landscape of 21st-century Latin America through comics. It examines works from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Perú, Colombia, México and Spain, and the resurgence of comics in recent decades spurred by the ubiquity of the Internet and reminiscent of the complex political experiences and realities of the region. The volume analyses experimentations in themes and formats and how Latin American comics have become deeply plural in its inspirations, subjects, drawing styles and political concerns while also underlining the hybrid and diverse cultures they represent. It examines the representative and historical images in a state of emergency and political upheaval; decolonial perspectives and social struggles linked to ethnic and sexual minorities. It looks at how Latin American comics are made right now – from a diverse and autochthonous Latin American perspective. With a wide array of illustrations, this book in the Global Perspectives in Comics Studies series will be an important resource for scholars and researchers of comic studies, Latin American studies, cultural studies, English literature, political history and post-colonial studies.




Literary Cynics


Book Description

Focusing on work by Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett and J.M. Coetzee, Literary Cynics explores the relationship between literature and cynicism to consider what happens when authors write themselves into their art, against the rhetoric of authority. Rose takes as his starting point three moments of aesthetic crisis in the careers of these literary cynics: Borges's parables of the 1950s, Beckett's plays of the 1980s, and Coetzee's pedagogic novels of the 2000s. In their transition to 'late style', the works reflect their writers' abiding concern with particular conceptions of rhetoric and aesthetic form. Literary Cynics combines accounts of these 'late' works with classic, lesser known, and archival texts by the three writers, from Coetzee's Disgrace to Beckett's letters, as well as detailed analysis of cynicism, both ancient and modern, as a philosophical and political movement.




Borges and the Literary Marketplace


Book Description

A fascinating history of Jorge Luis Borges’s efforts to revolutionize and revitalize literature in Latin America Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) stands out as one of the most widely regarded and inventive authors in world literature. Yet the details of his employment history throughout the early part of the twentieth century, which foreground his efforts to develop a worldly reading public, have received scant critical attention. From librarian and cataloguer to editor and publisher, this writer emerges as entrenched in the physical minutiae and social implications of the international book world. Drawing on years of archival research coupled with bibliographical analysis, this book explains how Borges’s more general involvement in the publishing industry influenced not only his formation as a writer, but also global book markets and reading practices in world literature. In this way it tells the story of Borges’s profound efforts to revolutionize and revitalize literature in Latin America through his varying jobs in the publishing industry.