HISP 204-500: Jorge Luis Borges.

Instructor: Prof. Alberto Moreiras

Office: 204A Academic Building
Email: moreiras@tamu.edu

Term: Spring 2016

Meeting Days: MW 4:10-5:25
Classroom: 228 Academic Building

Office Hours: 2:00 to 3:00, Mondays and Wednesdays

Course Description.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinian writer who is today considered
one of the greatest writers in Spanish of all times, certainly one of the most
influential in the 20th century. And even that may not say much, or not what really
matters. Reading Borges is an experience that might (should?) change your life.
Even if you have not already been exposed to serious literary study, even if you do
not devote your life to extensive reading, an engagement with Borges’ writing will
affect you in ways that you yourself will consider shocking, even mind-blowing.
The world is in fact divided between those who have been through Borges and those
who have not, the latter group being undoubtedly the unhappy one. You are about
to change groups.

HISP 204 is a course designed to teach Spanish and Latin American literature in
translation. We have excellent English translations of all of Borges’s work—
Andrew Hurley is the translator of the Collected Fictions, Alexander Coleman the
editor of the Selected Poems—a bilingual edition to which many extraordinary
English-speaking poets have contributed—, and Eliot Weinberger is the translator
of the Selected Non-Fiction. Those are the three books to work with through the
semester. A direct exposure, without critical mediations, to Borges’ work is what
the course will attempt.

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes for this course are to be considered:

1. First-hand knowledge of a vast section of the Borges oeuvre, to be tested by

examination questions (midterm and final exams)

2. Analytic capacity for literary interpretation: to be tested by the three reviews

you must write on the three most important genres in Borges writing: short
stories, poems, essays.
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3. Speculative skills: as you will see, Borges forces the reader to imagine
unfamiliar aspects of reality. Your speculative skills will improve through
class discussion. You are expected to become a frequent participant in them.

Scholarship, literary-critical skills, and speculative ability form the three principal
learning outcomes of this class. But before they become outcomes they must be
internalized by you, as a class participant, as practical goals of everyday work.

Textbooks

Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions. Andrew Hurley transl. London: Penguin,
1998.

---. Selected Non-Fictions. Eliot Weinberger ed. London: Penguin, 1999.

---. Selected Poems. Alexander Coleman ed. London: Penguin, 2000.

Grading Policy

Your grade for this seminar will be based on class participation, two written
examinations, and three 1000-word short-story, poem, or essay reviews. Class
participation is expected to be ongoing, and it should be based on course readings as
well as on other pertinent readings you may want to bring to bear. It includes class
presentations.

Participation: 10%
Written Examinations: 50%
Written Assignments: 40&

Attendance Policy

The student is granted the right to three unexcused absences. More than three
unexcused absences will affect the participation grade in the class at the rate of 2%
per missed seminar meeting. More than eight unexcused absences will be reported
to the Office of the Interim Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs for advice
on an adequate course of action.

Syllabus

Note 1: In this particular class, more so than in many other classes you may have
taken or will take, it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for everybody to come to class fully
prepared in terms of having done the readings. All students must bring to class EVERY
DAY the texts to be covered that day, with pertinent notes and underlinings, etc. This is
a class that will live or die on close readings, so it is a class that is based on the active
cooperation of the students.
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Note 2: Given the extreme richness of the Borgesian text, I am not entirely sure we will
be able to thematize every short story, essay, or poem in our class discussions. Be
aware that my intent is to do close reading and detailed interpretation in general,
which would seem to suggest we will not be able to cover more than two stories, or two
essays, or perhaps four or five poems per class period. That might open the path to
frustration, as you may feel the urgency for some discussions that will not take place. I
will try to leave the last ten minutes of every class period available to ideas or
proposals coming from the students regarding things not previously covered, but I may
not always be consistent. But then we have office hours as well, and I urge you to
make use of them.

Week 1 (Jan 20). Introduction.

Week 2 (Jan 25, 27): A Universal History of Iniquity (Collected Fictions 1-64)

Week 3 (Feb 1, 3) : Fictions (CF 65-129). “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “The
Approach to Al-Mu’tasim,” “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” “The Circular
Ruins,” “The Lottery in Babylon,” “A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain.”

Week 4 (Feb 8, 10): “The Library of Babel,” “The Garden of Forking Paths,” “Funes,
His Memory,” “The Shape of the Sword,” “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,”
“Death and the Compass,” “The Secret Miracle.”

Week 5 (Feb 15, 17): “Three Versions of Judas,” “The End,” “The Cult of the
Phoenix,” “The South.” The Aleph (CF 181-288): “The Immortal,” “The Dead Man.”

Week 6 (Feb 22, 24): “The Theologians,” “Emma Zunz,” “The House of Asterion,”
“Deutsches Requiem,” “Averroes’ Search,” “The Zahir,” “The Two Kings and the Two
Labyrinths,” “The Aleph.”

Week 7 (Feb 29, March 2): From Selected Non-Fictions: “The Perpetual Race of
Achilles and the Tortoise,” “The Postulation of Reality,” “The Homeric Versions,”
“The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights,” “John Wilkins’s Analytical
Language.”

MIDTERM EXAM: The exam is scheduled for Wednesday, March 2. Since the exam
will take up one entire class day, and depending upon how we are doing in terms of
keeping to the schedule, we may have to rearrange the syllabus at this point.

Week 8 (March 7, 9): “Coleridge’s Flower,” “Herman Melville, Bartleby the

Scrivener,” “The Last Voyage of Ulysses,” “Beatrice’s Last Smile,” “A New Refutation
of Time,” “The Wall and the Books.”

SPRING BREAK: March 14-20.

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Week 9 (March 21, 23): “Personality and the Buddha,” “Pascal’s Sphere,” “Kafka and
His Precursors,” “The Scandinavian Destiny.”

Week 10 (March 28, 30): From Selected Poems: The Maker (67-143)

Week 11 (April 4, 6): The Self and the Other (145-245)

Week 12 (April 11, 13): (Back to short stories). From Collected Fictions: “The
Ethnographer,” “The Duel,” “The Other Duel,” “The Mirror and the Mask,” “A Weary
Man’s Utopia,” “Undr.”

Week 13 (April 18, 20): I WILL BE ABSENT THIS WEEK—IN CHILE, ON

UNIVERSITY BUSINESS. I suggest you take this week as reading week in order to
finalize your three reviews.

Week 14 (April 25, 27): I am leaving this week open as we may need to make
adjustments to the schedule. If we do not readjust the schedule, then we will use
this week for an overall review of accomplished work from two key words:
obsession and persecution.

Monday, May 2, will be our last day of classes. We will review for the final exam (it
will be comprehensive), and you will do the class evaluations.

FINAL EXAM: Monday, May 9, 10:30-12:30.

IMPORTANT NOTE ON INSTRUCTOR’S ABSENCES: So far I have only scheduled my

absence for the week of April 18-22. But it is always possible that I will have to
travel some other day or days on university business. If so, I will notify you as far in
advance as I can, and we will make the corresponding adjustment.

Grading Scale

A: 90-100
B: 80-89
C: 70-79
D: 60-69
F: Below 60
.
American With Disabilities Act (ADA)

The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute

that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities.
Among other things, this legislation requires that all students with disabilities be
guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodation of
their disabilities. If you believe you have a disability requiring an accommodation,
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please contact Disability Services in Cain Hall, Room B118, or call 845 1637. For
additional information visit http://disability.tamu.edu

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