Genre vs.

Style
• science fiction
• westerns
• romantic comedy

• film noir
• melodrama
 Magical Realism
• Literary technique or style, not a genre
• Paradoxical union of opposites
• Rational reality vs. supernatural reality
• Normal, everyday settings
• Ironic distance from the (often magical) world in the
author/narrator
• Cyclical instead of linear time
• Carnivalesque environments
• Associated with South American authors, though
influenced by colonial European views
Some Magical Realists
More Authors
 Preceding Slides
• Jorge Borges (Argentina)
• Julio Cortázar (Argentina)
• Alvaro Mutis (Colombia)
• Gabriel Garcia-Marquez (Colombia)
• Isabelle Allende (Chile)
• Jose Saramago (Portugal)
• Salman Rushdie (India)
• Jorge Amado (Brazil)
 Definitions of Time
• We have diagrammed time relations in
Freytag. This supposes a certain idea of how
time functions.
• How might you represent time visually?
• Is there more than one way to do so?
 Some Models
• The infinite line
• The finite line
• The circle
• The point (or centered circle)
• Arboreal model
The Finite Line
The Circle
Historicism, Conflict, and Totality
The Point
Arboreal Model
 Historiography
• The method behind the writing of history
• A conscious understanding of one’s historical
assumptions
• Or, one that comes into view through
comparison
• Identification of paradigms of history
 Standard or Official History
• What do you think the idea of “standard
history” (or “official history”) means?
• How do teachers or schools decide which
history textbooks to use in class?
• What is the relation of power and history?
Jorge Borges (1899-1986)
 Borges Recommendations
• “The Circular Ruins”
• “Death and the Compass”
• “The Lottery in Babylon”
• “The Library of Babel”
• “The Secret Miracle”
• “The God’s Script”
 Text/Characters
• “The Garden of Forking Paths” (1941)

• Yu Tsun
• Captain Richard Madden
• Stephen Albert
• Ts’ui Pên
 Content
1. Who is Dr. Yu Tsun?
2. Why is Yu trying to escape Richard Madden?
3. What secret does Yu possess?
4. What challenge does Yu face in respect to this
secret?
5. Why does Yu act in the interests of Germany?
6. What directions must Yu follow to get to
Stephen Albert’s house?
 Content
7. Who was Ts’ui Pên and what did he intend to do?
8. What is Stephen Albert’s background? What
information does he provide about Ts’ui Pên?
9. What solution does Albert suggest to the confusion
over the book and the labyrinth?
10. What model or pattern of time does Albert suggest
Ts’ui Pên to have believed in? How is this expressed
(or not expressed) in his manuscript?
11. Why does Yu kill Albert?
 Passages
• Hart’s history (contested), Yu’s statement
(incomplete), footnote (another contestation):
65
• Yu’s historical reflections: 67
• Ts’ui Pên’s book: 68-70
• Ts’ui Pên’s theory of time: 69, 70
 Narration (I)
• Who is the narrator?
• Why is the narration presented in the way that it is?
• What is the purpose of presenting Yu’s story?
• Why does the author, in what is obviously a
fictional story, place a footnote at the bottom of the
first page criticizing the narrator?

• theme: uncertainty and circularity

 Narration (II)
• What is the narrator’s relation to Germany?
• To England?
• To Yu?
• To Captain Richard Madden?
• To Ts’ui Pên ?
• To Stephen Albert?

• theme: allegiance and responsibility

 Narration (III)
• The text,“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Borges,
reappears as the title of another text by Ts’ui Pên.
• Considering what we know about the outcome of the
story, is Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths” one
part of Ts’ui Pên’s text, or the other way around, or
separate texts with the same title, or what? If there is
confusion about this relation, does that mean that
Borges’ text renounces its claim to authorship?

• theme: circularity
 Labyrinth
• What is a labyrinth, in both its literal and its
figurative meanings?
• How might it function symbolically?
• What images does it bring to mind?
• Are they positive or negative?
 Labyrinths in Borges
• What is the solution to Yu Tsun’s confusion
about the labyrinth of his ancestor?
• How can a book be a maze?
• How can time be a type of maze?
 Time
• Is Ts’ui Pên’s theory of time plausible?
• If this theory were true why would it not allow
an absolute vision of time?
• What are the consequences of losing an
absolute system of time?
• Isn’t any conceptualization of time absolute?
 Guilt, Responsibility, Free Will
• What parallels are there between Ts’ui Pên’s
and Yu Tsun’s life?
• If Ts’ui Pên’s theory of time is correct, why
would Yu Tsun feel guilty since then there
would be no free will?
• What is the social point of Borges’ story (or is
there one)?
 Background
• “Continuity of Parks”
• Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Argentinean
• Literary or historical period: Modernism
• Genre: ?
• Terms: magical realism, paradox
Julio Cortázar
 Reading
• We are forced to read some kinds of books; we
choose to read other kinds. What distinction
do you make between the two?
• Alternatively, why do some people read if they
don’t have to?
• What are some factors in the decline of
reading?
• What are some of the consequences?
 Problem of Structure
• There is more than one way to read Cortázar’s
story.
• We can start by asking whether there is one
story or two stories.
• How you answer this question leads to
different interpretations.
 Structure 1: Two Stories
• Let’s assume there are two stories.
• We must first determine the break between
them.
• Then, we must distinguish the characters in the
two stories and determine how many there are.
• Then, we should examine the themes of the
two stories and how they are different or
similar.
 Questions
• Where is the break?
• How many characters are there in each story?
• How do the two stories differ (in theme, for
example)?

• This understanding is prosaic: a reader reading

a book resembling the reader’s reality.
 Structure 2: One Story
• Let’s assume there is only one story, and that there is
continuity (as the title suggests) between what we
have earlier called two stories.
• This position raises logical problems.
• Explain in a rational or logical way what happens—
don’t worry if it is possible or not, just make the story
fit together by following its own logic (the rules of
the story’s world do not need to match what is
possible in our world).
 Paradox
• Paradox is generally understood to be an
apparently consistent but internally illogical
statement—illogical since it violates our
everyday understanding of the world, or
linguistically illogical since it is self-
contradictory.
 Examples
• Certain types of statements (e.g., Everything I
say is a lie.). These are typically examples of
problematic syllogistic logic. (All men are
mortal/Socrates is a man/[therefore] Socrates
is mortal.)
• Zeno’s paradox.
 Reading about Reading
• We are reading a story about reading. In the
story, the reader is prompted to read the novel
for a reason.
• The book he reads is also in a certain genre.
• A difference is suggested between his normal
life and the content of the story.
• Why is it possible for the two storylines (life
and book) to merge together?
 Interpretative Approaches 1
• If you are a boring, unimaginative person, you
could simply read the story as a story about
reading.
• There would be no need to interpret the story
since it simply says what it says.
 Interpretative Approaches 2
• The idea of one story creates a paradox that is
seemingly impossible in the “real” world.
• The storyline entails a “distortion” of time and
space so that everyday, unproblematic ideas
about time and space are seriously disrupted.
• Where does this paradox lead?
Möbius Strip
 Interpretative Approaches 2
• The story encourages us to understand the
imaginative process of absorption in art
(literature in this case) as disrupting our
normal sense of time and space, to question
what these categories of experience mean and
how they are structured.
• Note how the consequences of this inquiry are
sinister.
 Interpretative Approaches 2
• In the specific case of the story, the contrast is
(among other things) between the structuring of
work and non-work, the fundamental structuring
device of modern experience.
• Moreover, the contrast extends to the space of
work and the space of non-work.
• Think this through—it is an essential point of
self-consciousness (membership, legitimacy,
etc.), and it is one which the story problematizes.
 Interpretative Approaches 3
• The story concerns the process of
identification with the literary protagonist.
• The two “he’s”—the reader (R) and the
protagonist (P)—merge in the story.
• The object of this process is self-destructive
since P attacks R. The imagined self of fiction
destroys the social self “outside” of the story.
 Interpretative Approaches 3
• This interpretation has both positive and
negative content:
• Point 1: Art (and note that it is popular art, not
canonical art) is a dangerous escape in that it
kills off the serious social (working) self—
distraction and escape (though only for those
with a favorable class position to start). Work
is favored: production, morality, and health in
its narrow sense.
 Interpretative Approaches 3
• Point 2: Art is the means by which the
restrictions on the social self are overcome, the
means by which liberation from that self is
achieved in a bourgeois world.
• Problem: Is this a true overcoming or only a
formal (i.e. in fantasy) overcoming?
 Interpretative Approaches 3
• Point 3: Art is the symbolic reduction of real
social concerns to the level of aesthetics and
therefore their neutralization.
 Interpretative Approaches 4
• The story is a deconstructive process by which
the text of the page can no longer be
distinguished from the text of the world, the
experience of that world which we understand
textually—the world as text.
• This interpretation also has both positive and
negative content.
 4a: Positive Content
• Work and production, art and consumption,
pleasure and self-destruction, social virtues
and immorality are false oppositions.
• They are constructed out of the same sign
systems that comprise the world.
 4b: Negative Content
• The text is that which we attempt to master
through reading (and deriving pleasure from
the text), but we cannot neutralize or
overcome the text—it is always greater than
ourselves; it comes up behind us to kill us
(figuratively).
 For Next Time
• Read: “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot”