Borges''s Poe: The Influence and Reinvention of Edgar Allan Poe in Spanish America

Edgar Allan Poes image and import in Spanish America shifted during the twentieth century, and this shift is clearly connected to the work of three writers from the Río de la Plata regionUruguayan Horacio Quiroga and Argentines Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. In Borgess Poe, Emron Esplin focuses on the second author in this trio and argues that Borges, through a sustained and complex literary relationship with Poes works, served as the primary catalyst that changed Poes image throughout Spanish America from a poet-prophet to a timeless fiction writer.

Most scholarship that couples Poe and Borges focuses primarily on each writers detective stories, refers only occasionally to their critical writings and the remainder of their fiction, and deemphasizes the cultural context in which Borges interprets Poe. In this book, Esplin explores Borgess and Poes published works and several previously untapped archival resources to reveal an even more complex literary relationship between the two writers. Emphasizing the spatial and temporal context in which Borges interprets Poethe Río de la Plata region from the 1920s through the 1980sBorgess Poe underlines Poes continual presence in Borgess literary corpus. More important, it demonstrates how Borgess literary criticism, his Poe translations, and his own fiction create a disparate Poe who serves as a precursor to Borgess own detective and fantastic stories and as an inspiration to the so-called Latin American Boom.

Seen through this more expansive context, Borgess Poe shows that literary influence runs both ways since Poes writings visibly affect Borges the poet, story writer, essayist, and thinker while Borgess analyses and translations of Poes work and his responses to Poes texts in his own fiction forever change how readers of Poe return to his literary corpus. See more