Borges' classics : global encounters with the Graeco-Roman past / Laura Jansen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jansen, Laura, 1974- author.

Series:

Classics after antiquity.

Classics after antiquity

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986--Criticism and interpretations.

Borges, Jorge Luis.

Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986--Knowledge--Civilization, Classical.

Civilization, Classical, in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxii, 174 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Summary:

In Borges' Classics, Laura Jansen reads the oeuvre of the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges as a radically globalized model for reimagining our relationship with the classical past. This major study reveals how Borges constructs a new 'physics of reading' the classics, which privileges a paradoxical vision of the canon as universal yet centreless, and eschews fixed ideas about the cultural history of the West. Borges' unique approach transforms classical antiquity into a simultaneously familiar and remote world, whose legacy is both urgent and unstable. In the process, Borges repositions the classical tradition at the intersection of the traditional Western canon and modernist literature of the peripheral West. Jansen's study traces Borges' encounters with the classics through appeal to themes central to Borges' thought, such as history and fiction, memory and forgetfulness, the data of the senses, and the vectors that connect cultures and countries.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. Borges' Classical Revisions

A Rumour of Homer

Pierre Menard's Odyssey and Aeneid

Zeno after Kafka

Classical Memory and Forgetfulness

Classical Absences and Desires

Classics at the Crossroads: Towards a Global Vision

Key Terms and Concepts

Aims and Scope of the Book

2. The Flow of Heraclitus

Borgesian Time and the Classics

Heraclitean Receptions

Receptions of the Unfinished Text

Borges and the Disclosure of Antiquity

3. The Idea of Homer

Homer in Borges' Postclassical Landscapes

Homeric Identities and Identifications

Odyssean Voyages into the Post-Historical Self

Borges' Homer in the Twentieth Century

4. Virgil's Touch

The Cultural Geography of Borges' Virgil

The Slow Hand and the Tears of Things

Borges' Virgil in Cultural History and Aesthetics

5. Antiquity in the Poetic Cosmos

Classical Fragments in Borges' Poetic Siluae

Myth, Poetry and the Mobius Effect of Literature

Heraclitus between Chaos and Universal History

6. Interlude: Borges and Global Classics

Global Classics and the Centreless Perspective

Antiquity as a Fragment

Borges' Global Classicism and `World' Literature

Global Classics vs World Studies

7. Successors of Borges' Classicism

Italo Calvino

Umberto Eco

Derek Walcott.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 27 Apr 2018).

ISBN:

1-108-30489-3

1-108-28997-5

1-108-30789-2