Calin-Andrei Mihailescu - Böcker

Through a twist of fate that the author of Labyrinths himself would have relished, these lost lectures given in English at Harvard in 1967–1968 by Jorge Luis Borges return to us now, a recovered tale of a life-long love affair with literature and the English language. Transcribed from tapes only recently discovered, This Craft of Verse captures the cadences, candor, wit, and remarkable erudition of one of the most extraordinary and enduring literary voices of the twentieth century. In its wide-ranging commentary and exquisite insights, the book stands as a deeply personal yet far-reaching introduction to the pleasures of the word, and as a first-hand testimony to the life of literature.Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms (especially the novel), literary history, and translation theory to philosophical aspects of literature in particular and communication in general. Probably the best-read citizen of the globe in his day, he draws on a wealth of examples from literature in modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese, speaking with characteristic eloquence on Plato, the Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as on translations of Homer, the Bible, and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.Whether discussing metaphor, epic poetry, the origins of verse, poetic meaning, or his own “poetic creed,” Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and in the making of a unique literary sensibility, this is a sustained encounter with one of the writers by whom the twentieth century will be long remembered.

“A wondrously limpid testament to the pleasures of reading.” —Steven Poole, The GuardianSix incandescent lectures on literature from the patron saint of mirrors, metafiction, and infinite libraries.For more than thirty years, Jorge Luis Borges’s Norton Lectures went unpublished. Recorded at Harvard in 1967 and 1968, the tapes gathered dust in a library vault until their discovery after his death. It was a twist that the author of Labyrinths would have relished. This volume assembles the recovered materials, offering a priceless window into the Argentinian master’s lifelong love affair with the English language.This Craft of Verse captures the cadences, candor, wit, and erudition of one of the twentieth century’s enduring literary voices. Though his avowed topic is poetry, Borges explores subjects ranging from prose forms—especially the novel—to literary history, translation theory, and philosophical aspects of communication writ large. Borges here draws on a wide range of literary examples—modern and medieval English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and Chinese. He brings characteristic eloquence and inexhaustible enthusiasm to readings of Plato, the Old Norse kenningar, Byron, Poe, Chesterton, Joyce, and Frost, as well as translations of Homer, the Bible, and the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.Whether discussing metaphor, the origins of verse, or his own “poetic creed,” Borges gives a performance as entertaining as it is intellectually engaging. A lesson in the love of literature and the making of a unique artistic sensibility, This Craft of Verse is a sustained encounter with one of the writers whose place in the twentieth century will be forever remembered.

Novels, movies, and lies – these are all fictions that provoke with their as ifs and what ifs. In response to the idea that fiction has somehow become an unfashionable topic in contemporary criticism, this volume argues that the question of fiction needs to be updated in the absence of a widely accepted theory of truth. This collection, dedicated to the noted scholar and literary critic Lubomir Dolezel, covers an extensive number of theoretical and historical issues relevant to our understanding of the status of fictions – literary or not. Fiction Updated offers approaches to fiction and poetics that, in an imaginary topography of contemporary humanities, dwell at a distance from both the mimetic theory of literature and deconstruction. The contributors introduce new perspective to the problem of fictionality, or broaden the scope of its applications, by examining the works of such authors as Homer, Casanova, Aristotle, Woolf, Vaihinger, Borges, Kundera, Coetzee, and Bakhtin. The collection is divided into six thematic sections. The first includes papers that attempt to approach the issue of fictionality from philosophical perspective. The second section is also theoretical and concentrates on models. The third emphasizes the more concrete problems of fictional worlds, such as character, genre, and gender. The four section deals with fiction and history, while the fifth treats poetics. The las section focuses on the contribution of Lubomir Dolezel to the theory of fictionality and fictional semantics.