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
By Erik Ketzan
Former Modern Word editor Erik Ketzan traces the influence of Borges upon Umberto Eco’s first novel.

Searching for Cyberspace: Joyce, Borges and Pynchon
By Davin O’Dwyer
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
By Christopher Rollason
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
By Christopher Rollason
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
By Céline Roos
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
By Barton St. Armand
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

Melville and Borges: Queequeg and the Jaguar
By Christopher Rollason
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
By Barbara Joan Schaffer
An exploration of universal truths found in the Borges story “The Circular Ruins.”

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

Other Notable Collections

Borges Center: Criticism
A massive database of Borges criticism in all languages, most available as downloadable PDFs.

Variaciones Borges
The journal of the Borges Center is a reliable source for a diverse range of papers and essays about Borges. It’s online behind a JSTOR paywall.

Modern Fiction Studies Vol. 19, No. 2: “Tribute Issue for Jorge Luis Borges”
The Autumn 1973 issue of Modern Critical Studies was completely devoted to Borges. It’s online behind a JSTOR paywall.

“A Pandemonium of Medieval Borges”
Issue 47.1 of the Old English Newsletter (2021) was entirely devoted to Borges. The issue contains nine essays about Borges, largely focusing on his fascination with Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian literature.

Academic Databases

JSTOR “Borges” Search
Over 24,000 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.

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

Submission Guidelines

The Garden of Forking Paths is part of The Modern Word, a former literature site now hosted by 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!