FL 380: An Archaeology of the "Boom": Modern Latin American Prose Fiction Reading

  1. 3 The mirror and the encyclopedia:
    How are they "Borgesian"?
  2. 3 Why does the mirror "trouble" the depths...?
  3. 3 What is the time frame of the narration?
    Who is the narrative voice pretending to be?
  4. Adolfo Bioy Casares: contemporary Argentinean writer, winner of the Cervantes Prize. Bioy has worked with Borges on many creative projects. He is the author of Morel's Invention among other novels and stories.
  5. 3 What is the subject of Bioy and Borges' "vast polemic"?
    How is it related to Borgesian literature?
  6. 3 Why would one of Uqbar's heresiarchs object to mirrors and men?
  7. 4 What does Borges initially conjecture about Bioy's anecdote about Uqbar?
    Why would that be ironic?
  8. 4 How does the article on Uqbar in the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia measure up to other articles therein?
  9. 5 How does the narrator ("Borges") substantiate their skepticism about Uqbar?
  10. What other book did Silas Haslam write?
  11. What is the significance of Johannes Valentinus Andreä's book?
  12. How can this be similar to Nolan in The Theme of The Traitor...
  13. 6 How is Herbert Ashe described? Profession, appearance, habits...
  14. 6 What is the narrator's reaction upon finding the book that Ashe had received?
  15. What is this story "about", according to the narrator?
  16. 7 How many pages does the book have?
  17. 7 Are the last ten lines of the first paragraph perhaps a parody?
         "Now I held . . . or tone of parody" (7)
  18. 7 Néstor Ibarra, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, Drieu La Rochelle, and Alfonso Reyes are all very well known literary and cultural critics. The N.R.F. is a prestigious French journal.
  19. 7-8 Who are the creators of Tlön?
  20. 8 What was first believed about Tlön?
    What is known now about it as a cosmos governed by rules?
  21. Is this a parody?
  22. 8 Why does not Tlön merit the attention of all men?
  23. 8 What is the ruling philosophy in Tlön?
         A. Berkeley: English idealist philosopher
  24. What does idealism presuppose?
  25. 9 How are literary poetic objects formed in Tlön?
  26. 9 What is the one and only discipline in Tlön?
    Why is that "no exaggeration"?
  27. 9 Do the Tlönians conceive of space and time as we do?
  28. 10 How do Tlönians understand every mental state?
    Can they be named or described?
  29. 10 How are Tlönian attitudes towards metaphysics?
    What do they pursue in it?
    How do they categorize it?
  30. 10 How do opinions regarding "time" vary among different schools of thought in Tlön?
  31. 11 How was "materialism" explained to the people of Tlön?
  32. 11-12 How was it variously refuted?
  33. 12 How is materialism finally reconciled with idealism by the orthodox heresiarch a hundred years after it was first formulated?
  34. Why is Schopenhauer's name relevant here?
  35. 12 What attitudes do Tlönians hold toward geometry and mathematics?
  36. 12-13 How do they account for the fact that people get the same results when they count the same quantity of objects?
  37. 13 How is literary criticism practiced in Tlön?
    Does plagiarism exist there?
    Is there a tone of parody in this depiction?
  38. 13 What other effects has idealism had on reality?
  39. What are hrönir?
  40. How was the methodical production of hrönir achieved?
  41. 14 What effect have hrönir had in the study of the past?
  42. 14 What is an ur?
  43. 14 What happens to things when they are forgotten?
    Is there a tone of parody here?
  44. 14 What information does the Postscript of 1947 add to the text?
    Read Irby's article to find out more about this.
  45. Who is Gunnar Erfjord?
  46. 15 What was the beginning of Tlön like in the early seventeenth century?
  47. 15 Who was Ezra Buckley?
  48. Why is this hilarious?
  49. 15 What was perhaps Buckley's ambition in funding Orbis Tertius?
  50. 16 What happened on Laprida Street to Princess Faucigny Lucinge in 1942?
    Can a fantastic world intrude into the world of reality?
  51. 16-17 Amorim is an Argentinean intellectual contemporary of Borges.
  52. What happens in the country store at Cuchilla Negra?
  53. 17 Why were some of the more fantastic aspects of Tlön attenuated in the edition discovered in a Memphis library in 1944?
  54. 17 How does the narrator explain the public's fascination with Tlön in the early 1940s?
  55. 17 Why is "useless" to argue that "reality is also orderly"?
  56. 17 What is the difference between the labyrinth -as Tlön- and the labyrinth as our world?
    Is there really such a big difference?
  57. 18 What has happened in the world since the dissemination of Tlön?
  58. 18 To what project does the narrator devote his energies at the very end?