Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph

Mark O'Connell (Trinity College Dublin)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 5.1.1: Hispanic Writing and Culture of South America.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Ben Bollig (University of Oxford), Ceire Broderick (University College Cork), Nuala Finnegan (University College Cork), Anna Forné (Gothenburg University), Cara Levey (University College Cork), Carolina Orloff (Independent Scholar - Europe), Lori Oxford (Western Carolina University), Ailsa Peate (University of Westminster)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1949

Places

Argentina (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

The Aleph,

published in Spanish as

El Aleph

in 1949, is a collection of short fiction by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Published eight years after

Fictions

, its seventeen stories consolidate Borges’ move away from the thematic terrain of his early stories (published in English in

A Universal History of Infamy

(1935)), which displayed a preoccupation with Argentina’s criminal underworld.

The Aleph

, like the stories in

Fictions

, is overwhelmingly concerned with the themes of time, infinity and identity, and further establishes labyrinths and mirrors as the quintessentially Borgesian motifs. (After Borges, it would be difficult for any author to incorporate these elements into their work without seeming to write in his vast shadow). He is, by and large, uninterested in creating…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2681 words

Citation: O'Connell, Mark. "The Aleph". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 July 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14414, accessed 20 April 2024.]

Save this article