Introduction


Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges, a master of English and Spanish prose, grew up in a neighborhood of gangsters. For many years, he imagined himself a companion to those outlaws, until he grew up and faced the truth, which was that he spent most of his youth locked away in the safety of his family’s library with a seemingly endless supply of books that fed his imagination. His family members were also somewhat notorious themselves. His mother was descended from a long line of freedom fighters and soldiers and kept the Borges’ house decorated with swords and other memorabilia of wars. His grandfather was shot to death during Argentina’s frontier days, and Borges’ father, a lawyer and professor of psychology, was a professed anarchist. It seems, then, that Borges never had a choice: he was destined to revolutionize Latin American literature with his elegantly crafted short stories.

Essential Facts

  1. Borges was raised in a bilingual family in Buenos Aires. He was well out of childhood before he realized that English and Spanish were two separate languages.
  2. Borges’ younger sister, Norah, was the only friend he had as a child. The two of them spent a lot of their day acting out stories they had read.
  3. When Borges was 29, he met Elsa Astete. She was 20. Borges fell in love and thought Elsa had too. But she suddenly left him and married another man. When Borges was in his sixties, he reunited with Elsa, who became Borges’ first wife.
  4. In 1938, Borges was hit on the head. While recovering, he almost died from blood poisoning. That near-death experience changed his thinking, and he started writing in a new style, one that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
  5. Borges died on June 14, 1986. During the last thirty years of his life, he was completely blind, but that didn’t stop him from publishing. His mother helped by reading to him and taking dictation.
 

Recommended Resources

  1. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 1)
  2. Jorge Luis Borges - Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century
  3. Jorge Luis Borges - Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism
  4. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings Study Guide (quickNotes)
  5. The Aleph Study Guide (eNotes)

All Resources

Display as: Categories, List
  1. Collected Fictions
  2. Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction
  3. Critical Survey of Short Fiction
  4. Cyclopedia of World Authors
  5. Doctor Brodie's Report quickNotes
  6. Ficciones
  7. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 1)
  8. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 2)
  9. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 3)
  10. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 4)
  11. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 6)
  12. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 8)
  13. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 83)
  14. Jorge Luis Borges - Contemporary Literary Criticism (Vol. 9)
  15. Jorge Luis Borges - Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century
  16. Jorge Luis Borges - Poetry Criticism
  17. Jorge Luis Borges - Short Story Criticism
  18. Jorge Luis Borges - Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism
  19. Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings Study Guide (quickNotes)
  20. Pierre Menard - Masterplots II: Short Story Series
  21. Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote Study Guide
  22. Selected Non-Fictions
  23. Selected Poems
  24. The Aleph - Masterplots II: Short Story Series
  25. The Aleph Study Guide (eNotes)
  26. The Garden of Forking Paths - Masterplots II: Short Story Series
  27. The Garden of Forking Paths Study Guide
  28. The Oxford Companion to English Literature Article on Jorge Luis Borges
  29. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare Article on Jorge Luis Borges
  30. The Spider's Stratagem (1970)