Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but hypothesis may not


Borges Papers & Essays

During its first incarnation in the 1990s–early 2000s, the Garden of Forking Paths included links to every Borges-related paper it could find! Today, sites such as JSTOR make this both impossible and unnecessary. This section of the Garden is now dedicated only to hosting Borges-related papers and essays. If you would like the Garden to host your Borges-related paper or essay, please read our “submission guidelines” at the bottom of the page.


Papers

Borges and The Name of the Rose
Ketzan, Erik.
Modern Word editor Erik Ketzan traces the influence of Borges upon Umberto Eco’s first novel.

Searching for Cyberspace: Joyce, Borges and Pynchon
O’Dwyer, Davin.
Davin O’Dwyer as Dublin-based writer and editor who has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Irish Times. In “Searching for Cyberspace,” O’Dwyer examines how the Internet is anticipated or prefigured in the works of Borges, James Joyce, and Thomas Pynchon. [PDF]

Borges’ “Library of Babel” and the Internet
Rollason, Christopher.
A response to comments by French academic Ignacio Ramonet, Rollason’s paper examines comparisons between the early Web and Borges’ infinite “Library of Babel.”

Literature as History: José Saramago’s O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis
Rollason, Christopher.
This paper discusses the intertextuality of Saramago’s homage to Fernando Pessoa, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Among other things, Rollason highlights Saramago’s use of Borges.

“Emma Zunz” as Endgame
Roos, Céline
International Chess Master Céline Roos postulates that Borges structured “Emma Zunz” around symbolism and metaphors derived from the ancient game of chess. [PDF]

Synchronistic Worlds: Lovecraft and Borges
St. Armand, Barton
Brown University’s Barton Levi St. Armand compares the fictional milieus of Jorge Luis Borges and H.P. Lovecraft. An important work of early Lovecraft scholarship, this paper is online at the Garden courtesy of Hippocampus Press, and appears in An Epicure in the Terrible: A Centennial Anthology of Essays in Honor of H.P. Lovecraft. [PDF]


Essays

Ideology as Barbarism and Infinite Regression: Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Theologians”
Keating, Kevin P.
Novelist Kevin P. Keating examines the notions of orthodoxy and heresy in “The Theologians,” which he sees as an ambiguous response to the nature of authorship and the dangers of ideology. [PDF]

Fact or Fiction? Historical Narratives in Borges
McGrath, Timothy.
By focusing on “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” and “Three Versions of Judas,” McGrath discusses how Borges blurs historical and religious truth through storytelling.

Melville and Borges: Queequeg and the Jaguar
Rollason, Christopher.
Rollason compares the mystical patterns on Borges’ jaguar in “The God’s Script” with Queequeg’s tattoos in Melville’s Moby-Dick.

The Circular Ruins
Schaffer, Barbara Joan.
An exploration of universal truths found in the Borges story “The Circular Ruins.”

Aleph, Beatriz, Carlos Argentino
Schaffer, Barbara Joan.
Speculations about Borges the writer, as revealed in “The Aleph.”


Other Collections

JSTOR “Borges” Search
Over 20,000 results. Go wild!

Project Muse “Borges” Search
Project Muse is another archive of published papers.

Academia “Borges” Search
Academia has over thousands of Borges papers available as PDFs.

ReasearchGate “Borges” Search
Ostensibly a database of scientific papers, ReasearchGate has many Borges offerings.


Submission Guidelines

The Garden of Forking Paths is part of The Modern Word, a former literature site being “reconstructed” at Shipwreck Library. The Garden of Forking Paths is a Borges site, not a peer-reviewed journal. We offer a place to host academic papers and essays about Borges. These works may have been previously published. We also accept works by non-academic writers.

General Guidelines
We prefer PDFs, which will be posted on the site as formatted. Of course, this offers the advantage of maintaining all images and typography. Microsoft Word or other such documents will be converted to HTML and posted as simple Web pages. An abstract is not necessary, but a few sentences for an “About the Author” would be nice.

Academic Papers
Previously-published papers should include information on their publishing history. All copyright issues should be secured in advance by the submitting writer—The Garden makes no pretensions regarding copyrights. These are your papers, we are just hosting them!

Essays
Essays are shorter and less formal than papers, and may be submitted by writers from outside traditional academia.

If you’d like your work to be hosted here, please contact the Garden!


Editor: Allen B. Ruch
Last Modified: 18 November 2021
Borges Main Page: The Garden of Forking Paths
Contact: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com

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