Short Forms: Major Works in a Minor Key

This course focuses on two outstanding practitioners of the short story in twentieth century Latin American literature –the Argentineans Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar—paying close attention to each one’s most famous collection of stories (Borges’ Ficciones [1944], Cortázar’s Final del juego [1956]). We’ll map the ways in which their writing connects to different genres (detective fiction, science fiction, poetry), media (photography, painting, film), and practices of adaptation (especially translation), and explore their legacy for more recent writers (Ricardo Piglia, Edmundo Paz Soldán, Roberto Bolaño, Samanta Schweblin).