Approaching the idea of the library as a polyvocal, self-contradictory and even paradoxical dream, this thesis examines five select texts to examine how this dream emerges across vastly different representations in fiction. Discussed texts include Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Library of Babel” and “The Book of Sand,” Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and Thomas Wharton’s Salamander. Special attention is given to the archetypal opposition between daytime’s clarity and night’s disorder, as well as to Alberto Manguel’s two hypothesized library foundational myths, the Tower of Babel and the Library of Alexandria. Although it attempts to remain conscious of social realities surrounding and producing historical libraries, this thesis is primarily concerned with the textual irruption of libraries in fictional narratives, and while its argument articulates the problematic dimension of libraries, it also endeavours to show how libraries are healthy, necessary, and even inevitable human creations. / A survey of library representations in select literary texts.

No se posee.

En las letras argentinas, en particular, y aun en el ámbito de la cultura universal, se destaca la figura de Jorge Luis Borges, como poeta y pensador. A través de la lectura de sus obras, es posible descubrir a un narrador inquisitivo que, a la vez que medita sobre el valor de la palabra en la Modernidad, postula una Estética que conduce a la reflexión filosófica.En efecto, la mayoría de sus textos nos remiten, por vía de una Poética, ya sea a lo metafísico -el problema del tiempo y del ser , o a lo teológico -fundado en la cuestión de la Eternidad--.Atentos a tal particularidad de la obra borgeana, es el propósito de esta tesis investigar ese acercamiento a los grandes problemas filosóficos, planteados por el escritor argentino, a partir de la exégesis de su arte poética, es decir, a partir del análisis significativo de la palabra.Sobre la base de las producciones del poeta en las que se incluyen los campos semánticos de Cielo - Infierno, Cuerpo y Alma, Bien y Mal, Fe y Razón, se construye un universo lingüístico semiótico en el cual, una vez delimitados los ámbitos estético y filológico, es posible trascender el análisis puramente lingüístico, a fin de alcanzar las connotaciones filosóficas que operan en la obra del escritor argentino. A partir del examen del papel denotativo - connotativo de la palabra, y la relación entre metáfora y símbolo, concatenadas a su vez con la analogía, pueden asimismo delimitarse los mecanismos con que operan Poesía y Filosofía. Reconocido el influjo filosófico, se establece que dos son las profundas raíces de las que Borges es deudor: nominalista una, neoplatónica la otra. Por lo tanto, en primer término, se evalúa la adhesión a la postura de la desacralidad de la palabra, de fuerte raíz nominalista. Se analiza el influjo de Guillermo de Ockham y el del empirismo inglés (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) respecto del lenguaje.En segundo término, se investiga el uso del nombre como símbolo, bajo el influjo de platonismo y neoplatonismo. Se reúnen los conceptos desarrollados en las secciones precedentes, ahondando la reflexión respecto del ideario platónico y su reelaboración lingüístico semiótica en la obra de Borges. Se delimitan los alcances de una postura filosófica plena, y las limitaciones en el acceso a la reflexión sobre el Ser si se prescinde de una vía iluminativa. Se estudia cómo y hasta dónde una Estética puede conseguir trascendencia. Se propende igualmente a integrar las reflexiones sobre Estética y verdad filosófica, constituidas en relación a una filosofía del lenguaje.A la luz de la exégesis se corroboran las siguientes consideraciones:Las reflexiones filosóficas de Borges están elaboradas en función de un objetivo filológico hermenéutico y/o estético.Filosofía y Literatura se constituyen en un aparato conceptual desde el cual mirar el mundo.La meta de la poética borgeana es remitir a una Metafísica por vía de la palabra. / Jorge Luis Borges, the argentine writer, is greatly recognised in the fields of Literature, as a famous and most excellent poet, as well as in Philosophy, due to his texts about Time, Eternity, Theology. His production includes the reflections about Aesthetics, the value of the poetical word, the exquisite meditations about connotative symbols, metaphors and analogies. Based upon this particularity of the poetical productions, the aim of the present work is to determine strong considerations about the constant mention of the philosophical world in Borges. The exegesis of his poems, stories and pages including elaboration of different semantic fields, (such as the dualism of Body and Soul, Heaven and Hell, Faith and Ration, Goodness and Badness) leads into a philosophical reflection. This particularity is strongly determined by two aspects of the History of Philosophy: the English empirism, which characters are included in Borges's texts providing refutations to Metaphysics; and the influence of Platonism, which is present in a production leading to a world of manifestation of the sacred God.To sum up, we consider that the most important contributions to the exegesis for the study of the production of Borges are:- The philosophical reflections are undoubtedly proof of an hermeneutic objective, in pro of Philology and Aesthetics,- Philosophy and Literature constitute a conceptual basis over which the context world is understood and developed,- The aim of the Poetic elaboration in Borges is a Metaphysical goal constructed upon the intensive dealing with the Beauty which is omnipresent in every word.

Borges saw narrative as the bearer of universally re-combinable elements. Although these elements seem sequential, their essential formal integrity guarantees their rearrangement to generate new narratives. The ficción lives beyond its author. However, Borges’ ontological anxieties also have a life of their own that undermines the ficción’s assimilative potential. By developing poetic and linguistic insights Borges creates immortal text through the construction of a symbolic repertoire. Each element of the repertoire has its genesis in the author’s personal development. This history is archaeologised in the early poetry and mediated through a theory of metaphor and the reader’s interaction with the text. Borges sees no need for a Freudian reading theory. Instead he develops an antipsychological poetics. He enlists the reader as a willing participant in the text by a dual strategy of symbolic incorporation. Firstly, readers identify with characters through vicarious emotional prediction. Secondly, he refreshes the reader’s participation by presenting emblematic devices serving as sub-text to enhance symbolic participation. Together these strategies constitute a ‘magic causality’ of negotiated textual interpretation continually operating in his narratives. But the discipline of magic causality also conceals a rhetoric of presence establishing counter-motivational effects to disturb symbolic incorporation at the level of genre. The dissertation extracts key features for scrutiny from Borges’ early literary theory and criticism, elaborating them into a general aesthetic programme. It examines biographical influences in shaping his critical and creative work. It problematises his texts from the point of view of his ideas about linguistics, their identity as contributions to the genre of the ficción, and the centrality of metaphor and analogy as interpretative strategies. I use a number of approaches for this enterprise, including biographical criticism (ontological preoccupations), substitutional analysis (temporal subjectivity), linguistic interpretation (theory of metaphor), literary criticism (readerly reception), structuralism (readerly incorporation), and deconstruction (rhetoric of suppression). The dissertation pragmatically investigates, and contests, Borges’ assimilative poetics of textual presence.

ABSTRACT WHERE WE CANNOT SPEAK The poetry collection Where We Cannot Speak and the accompanying critical essay “Borges and the Golem Paradox: a Rhetoric of Silence?” explore the theme of language and silence. The poetry collection is written in the voice of the imaginary (but published) poet, Gershon Holtz, who reflects my Jewish heritage and upbringing. The poems articulate the silences of those oppressed by war and persecution, and also the silences of meditation and the ineffable, which can reside in the presence, absence, and margins of the poet’s voice. The collection is comprised of two sections: (i) “The Mantelpiece”, which delves into culture, conflict, and memory; and (ii) “The Beautiful Salon”, which reflects upon themes of place, time, loss, and responses to silences represented in visual art and poetry. The critical essay is concerned with the cabalistic figure of the golem—a human being made in an artificial way by magic art, through the use of holy names. Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges (famous for creating fictitious authors and books) wished that, of all his work, the first stanza of his poem “The Golem”, might be remembered. The essay provides a reading that demonstrates how the poem embodies Borges’ views on the nature of signification, language, and knowledge. The paradoxical outcome is that, just as the golem did not have the power of speech, language conceived of as an instrument for textual golem-making is silent in its capacity to represent the world. The essay concludes with some thoughts on my own poetic practice and links the essay with the poetry collection via the figure of the textual golem, Gershon Holtz. This fictional poet becomes a symbol for the problem of language and representation—interpreted both as what we cannot speak about, and the silences inherent in language itself.

This thesis argues that all literature is subject to ‘afterlife,’ a continual process of translation. From this starting point, this thesis seeks to answer two questions. Firstly, how texts demonstrate this continual translation; secondly, how texts should be read if they are understood as constantly within translation. To answer these questions, this thesis seeks to develop a model of textuality that holds afterlife as central, and a model of reading based on this concept of textuality. Chapter One explores how following through the implications of Walter Benjamin’s and Jacques Derrida’s usages of the term ‘afterlife’ in their writings on translation, language and history necessarily implies a model of textuality. The model of reading that this thesis seeks to develop focuses on language and history, as Benjamin and Derrida define these as the parameters within which translation takes place. This study emphasises textuality itself as a third parameter. Chapter One also describes how, following Benjamin and Derrida, language and history are conceived as inescapable, repressive systems. This, paradoxically, allows for the concept of ‘messianicity’ – the idea that all language, and every historical event, has the potential to herald an escape from language or history. By definition, because language and history are all-encompassing, this potential cannot be enacted, and remains potential. An innovation of this thesis is to understand textuality itself as having ‘messianic potential’; all texts have the potential to escape textuality and afterlife, by reaching a point where they could no longer be translated. Understanding texts as having messianic potential, but always being subject to afterlife, is the basis of the model of reading described at the end of this chapter. Due to the ways Benjamin and Derrida suggest we recognise messianic potential, texts are read with a dual focus on their singularity and their connections to other texts. This is achieved through the ‘text-in-afterlife,’ a concept this thesis develops that understands texts as inextricable from the texts they translate and the texts that translate them. Chapters Two, Three and Four test and complicate this model of reading in response to texts by James Joyce, Aimé Césaire and Jorge Luis Borges. Concepts of textuality and reading are therefore developed throughout the thesis. The three key texts are read with focus on their individual relationships with language, history and textuality, and their connections to the texts they translate. Critics have linked Joyce’s Ulysses to multiple other texts, making it seem exceptional. However, the concept of messianicity shows that Ulysses is important precisely because it is not exceptional. Césaire’s Une Tempête demonstrates how a text can interact with several translations of ‘the same’ text simultaneously, and also that, although language and history are structured by colonialism and are inescapable, there is a huge potential for translation within these terms. Borges’ ‘Pierre Menard, Autor del Quijote’ demonstrates the form of texts’ continual translation in afterlife by describing a text that is verbally identical to the text it ‘translates,’ yet is nevertheless different in ‘meaning’ from its original. Borges’ fiction also highlights the endless potential for translation that is inherent to all texts. Through four chapters, this thesis develops a model of textuality that understands literature as defined by an almost endless potential for translation. The value of reading texts in the terms of ‘afterlife’ is to emphasise literature’s immense potential: all texts are continually translated in relation to language, history and textuality, and continually reveal further texts.

This thesis examines the preoccupation with the relationship between history and fiction present in the work of Leonardo Sciascia and Jorge Luis Borges. By means of different narrative strategies, both authors underscore the narrative elements that underpin any reconstruction of the past, and in this way they link the process of reconstruction of past events to the process of rewriting of a literary work. They emphasise, however, that whereas the literary work can be enriched by multiple rewritings, multiple reconstructions of the same real past event risk threatening its truthfulness. This thesis investigates the different ways in which Borges’s and Sciascia’s works intersect, across three narrative forms: the detective story, the historical essay (inchiesta or ‘enquiry’ for Sciascia) and the historical fiction. The analysis of Sciascia’s texts starts from a focus on the structural similarities with the work of Borges in the detective story, paying particular attention to Il contesto (1971), Todo modo (1974), and Il cavaliere e la morte (1988). It then moves on to Sciascia’s inclusion of fragments of Borges’s texts in two of his inchieste, L’affaire Moro (1978) and Il teatro della memoria (1981). The last chapter of the thesis proposes a metafictional reading of Sciascia’s historical novel Il Consiglio d’Egitto (1963), in the light of the comparisons with Borges’s work undertaken in the previous chapters. The two key aims of this thesis are to show (1) that studying the ways in which Sciascia integrates Borges’s texts in his own writing allows a deeper understanding of Sciascia’s texts, but also underscores traits in Borges’s which might have been downplayed by previous criticism of his work, and (2) that reconsidering in the light of this understanding a number of Sciascia’s other texts where Borges’s influence is not explicit allows us to identify a preoccupation with regards to the relationship between history and fiction shared between both authors.

204 f. / Submitted by Cynthia Nascimento (cyngabe@ufba.br) on 2013-03-07T14:30:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Hector andres Briones Vasquez.pdf: 3256011 bytes, checksum: 3ecd2c18cf1464d312fcac5a125248c0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ednaide Gondim Magalhães(ednaide@ufba.br) on 2013-04-05T14:48:23Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Hector andres Briones Vasquez.pdf: 3256011 bytes, checksum: 3ecd2c18cf1464d312fcac5a125248c0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-04-05T14:48:23Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Hector andres Briones Vasquez.pdf: 3256011 bytes, checksum: 3ecd2c18cf1464d312fcac5a125248c0 (MD5) / A presente pesquisa reflete sobre o fluxo teatral latino-americano, chamado aqui ‘da virada’,que vai se diferenciar do teatro latino-americano de esquerda, que o antecedeu. Este último, muito importante nas décadas de 1960 e 1970, teve seu eixo na luta de classes e na promoção e defesa de um projeto utópico de sociedade, anulado, em sua maior parte, pelas ditaduras que assolaram o continente nas décadas de 1960 a 1980. Abandonado em meados dos anos de 1980, sua apelação política direta começará a dar lugar a outras nuances artísticas no teatro contemporâneo do continente, operando com óticas mais subjetivas, intimistas e tratando de articular o social, o histórico e o contingente em um âmbito cênico que vai deslocar seu sentido político doutrinário. Surgem espetáculos que dão especial atenção a composição espacial e sonora da cena, à corporeidade dos intérpretes, ao trabalho da imagem no palco, o que vai possibilitar pensar nos alcances poéticos e políticos da sua teatralidade. Um olhar a partir da alegoria permitirá dar visibilidade a esses alcances, a teoria do alegórico de Walter Benjamin se torna chave para pensar na cena e na sua materialidade, sendo a base teórica desta pesquisa. O que se indaga aqui é como o teatro latino-americano contemporâneo ‘da virada’ se lança em uma viagem à teatralidade, gerando cenas cujo status crítico tangencia, sobretudo, nosso tempo democrático neoliberal, radiografando o que nele há de perda. / Universidade Federal da Bahia. Escola de Dança/ Escola de Teatro. Salvador-Ba, 2011.

This project is a narratological study of the border between fiction and reality, and the traversing thereof. I postulate that the permeability of this border is the consequence of textual acts: Cataloged Fabulations, Second-tier Fictionals, and Rhizomatic Fabrications. These are akin to speech acts in that fictional entities gain nonfictional status by means of an implicit contract at the heart of the textual act. Having laid out the narratological foundation of the textual acts' power, I argue that the narratological bears on the ontological through performative speech acts, as portrayed in J. L. Austin's tripartite model. I use two lenses in my analysis: the work of Jorge Luis Borges and the Hebrew Bible and its commentaries. The Borgesian trifecta is encyclopedia, mirror, and labyrinth, referents that are synonymous with the three textual acts noted above. In terms of the biblical lens, my analysis focuses on a metaphor family in Jewish mysticism. This family includes the World as Book, The Torah as Blueprint, God as Author, and Letters as Building Blocks. The resulting conceptual system is narratological in nature. Consequently it is useful to draw on this system so as to elucidate the field of narratology. The binoculars offer a parallax view, which provides a unique perspective on narratology: the combination of modernist/postmodernist fantasy and the urtext of the Western literary canon.

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