The Oxford Handbook of Jorge Luis Borges

Book excerpt: "The Oxford Handbook of Jorge Luis Borges consists of thirty-five chapters, organized into four main categories: Borges's life, his representative work traced across the many decades of his writing, his work in collaboration, and his reception in literature and other disciplines. The volume highlights current debates among Borges scholars as a way to reevaluate how the physical forms and sociopolitical contexts of Borges's writings both shaped and determined specific readerships around the world. Alongside these novel approaches to Borges's fictions and nonfictions, this Handbook is the first of its kind to dedicate space to the reception of Borges's works in the fields of philosophy, the visual arts, film, political science, media theory, mathematics, and law. The collection also goes further to trace Borges's activity in the public sphere, including local and national politics and the functioning of cultural institutions. To date, no other collection devoted to his writings or life addresses these issues in depth, nor do they consider how his affiliations and interests change over the course of his long life. Incorporating these broader perspectives into this Handbook serves to bring out tensions, continuities, and discontinuities in Borges's work, allowing for a much more nuanced understanding of it. Jorge Luis Borges, literary studies, literary history, reception, Argentine literature, Latin American literature"--