Against Borges
Four Women Writers of his Inner Circles
Author(s) Patricia N. Klingenberg
Language: English
Genre(s): Literary Criticism
Series: Iberian and Latin American Studies
- January 2025 · 264 pages ·216x138mm
- · Hardback - 9781837722044
- · eBook - pdf - 9781837722051
- · eBook - epub - 9781837722068
About The Book
The four writers of this study – Norah Lange, Silvina Ocampo, Estela Canto and Silvina Bullrich – are rarely considered together. Each, however, made their literary start within the close-knit circles dominated by Jorge Luis Borges in Buenos Aires in the mid-twentieth century. The title of the book plays with the double meaning of the word ‘against’ – signifying ‘opposed’ or ‘resistant’, but also ‘touching’ or ‘supported by’. In each case, the four writers benefited from early support from Borges, before eventually finding their own voices different from his as well as from each other’s. These writers struggled as much as their nineteenth-century counterparts to find ways to represent in fiction a particularly feminine subjectivity, and this study recognises their similarities as well as their originality. Most importantly, it seeks to undo misperceptions about these writers that have persisted to the present day, particularly regarding their individual paths through the fraught politics of Argentina’s twentieth century.
Endorsements
‘Klingenberg’s revelatory study of Norah Lange, Silvina Ocampo, Estela Canto and Silvina Bullrich gives a fascinatingly rich and textured reading of these women’s works and their importance for later writers. Her careful and nuanced analyses of their texts – which can too easily seem puzzling and problematic from the perspective of twenty-first century feminisms – bring a wealth of new insights. Klingenberg points us to Lange’s modernity regarding women’s sexuality, Canto’s revision of noir conventions and critique of hypermasculinity in Argentinian society, and Bullrich as precursor of contemporary debates on conflicted attitudes towards maternity. Ocampo is read through the motif of the hidden artist throughout her work. Meanwhile, Borges recedes pleasingly into the background, leaving these strong women and their work centre stage.’
Dr Fiona Mackintosh, University of Edinburgh
Contents
Series Editors’ Foreword
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1 The Borges Connection
2 Norah Lange, the Voyeur
3 Silvina Ocampo, the Artist
4 Estela Canto, the Rebel
5 Silvina Bullrich, the Bad Mother
Bibliography
Index