2024/12/01 by Nicolás Medina Mora · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Borges, Kipling, and Jewish Identity #Latin American Literature Analysis #Latin American Literature Studies
paper · doi:10.1353/sdn.2024.a948006
openalex publication_date 2024/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract: Though some critics trace the lineage of contemporary Anglophone autofiction to 1970s France, the novelistic devices of Ben Lerner and other similar writers prove more interesting if we consider them as translations of Roberto Bolaño's ironic approach to autobiography, which in turn descends from Jorge Luis Borges's use of metaphysical conceits as a prophylaxis against the embarrassing nature of the First Person. By highlighting the resonances between Borges's statements on the unstable relationship between "life" and "literature" and Paul de Man's writings on autobiography, I argue that reading English-language autofiction in a post-structuralist key amounts to reading it as Hispanophone literature.