Borges, Jorge Luis | Michael Wreen (essay date 1995)
Michael Wreen (essay date 1995)
SOURCE: “Don Quixote Rides Again!” in Romanic Review, Vol. 86, No. 1, January, 1995, pp. 141–63.
[In the following essay, Wreen presents a philosophical argument for reading Borges's story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” as a version of Don Quixote.]
In a recent article, “Once Is Not Enough?”, I argued that a book word-for-word identical with Cervantes' Quixote wouldn't be a new Quixote, numerically distinct from Cervantes', if it were produced in the manner described in Borges' short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote.” Menard's novel would simply be Cervantes', I tried to show, although admittedly produced in a very odd way. But philosophical issues (such as the individuation of works of art) are one thing, literary interpretation quite another. In this paper I'll be offering a comprehensive interpretation of Borges' story and arguing, against a number of...
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