Within the revival of World Literature Studies, the oeuvre of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges has performed a variety of roles. In his seminal essay, “The Argentinian Writer and the Tradition,” Borges can be seen as a Latin American cornerstone in the defense of the periphery's equality to the center; in “The Translators of The 1001 Nights,” Borges acts as a precursor to the cultural turn in translation studies and to the notion that world literature is one that gains in translation; in a plethora of other works, Borges intertextualizes world literature, whether through his interpretation of Kafka's works, his essays on Dante's Commedia, or his interest in the Kabbalah.
In her fascinating new study, Borges, Buddhism and World Literature: A Morphology of Renunciation Tales, Dominique Jullien, who is professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Santa Barbara, convincingly makes the case...
