Browsing by Subject "Jorge Luis Borges"
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Item Borges' "Homosexual Panic": Christensen's Film Version of "La instrusa"(1996-04-19) Brant, Herbert J.In this paper, I compare Borges' story “La intrusa” with Christensen's 1981 film version to note the way in which a homoerotic element in Borges' fictional world has been perceived and translated from subtle suggestivity in the written text to a more explicit visual depiction. I will then analyze Borges' subsequent horrified reaction to the more direct rendering. In the story and the film, the Nilsen brothers make use of a communal woman for the purpose of connecting physically and emotionally with each other. Christensen's reading of Borges' text shows that the erotic desire of the two men is plainly not directed towards a female, but rather towards each other, with the female as the intermediary focal point at/in which the two men may coincide. The film seems to imply that Borges has substituted an intervening female body between the men as a way to permit the men to connect physically without transgressing hetero-patriarchal prohibitions. The question in this story of fraternal love that has crossed the homosocial-homosexual continuum to the homosexual side has been an issue since the story first appeared. For that reason, Borges' intensely negative reaction to Christensen's film is all the more fascinating for what it suggests about the Argentine writer. As Balderston, Altamiranda and Silvestri have noted, Borges was so disturbed by the depiction of the Nilsen brothers as homosexual, that he penned an article in which he broke with his long-standing opposition to government censorship of media by suddenly advocating it in the case of this particular film. As I will show, I believe that Christensen's adaptation hits the target when it visually portrays a subtext that simultaneously attracted and repulsed Borges and his reaction is a clear case of “homosexual panic.”Item The Mark of the Phallus: Homoerotic Desire in Borges' "La forma de la espada"(Chasqui: Revista de Literatura Latinoamericana, 1996-05) Brant, Herbert J.Item "Minds will grow perplexed": The Labyrinthine Short Fiction of Steven Millhauser(2014-02-25) Andrews, Chad Michael; Rebein, Robert, 1964-; Eller, Jonathan R., 1952-; Bourus, TerriSteven Millhauser has been recognized for his abilities as both a novelist and a writer of short fiction. Yet, he has evaded definitive categorization because his fiction does not fit into any one category. Millhauser’s fiction has defied clean categorization specifically because of his regular oscillation between the modes of realism and fantasy. Much of Millhauser’s short fiction contains images of labyrinths: wandering narratives that appear to split off or come to a dead end, massive structures of branching, winding paths and complex mysteries that are as deep and impenetrable as the labyrinth itself. This project aims to specifically explore the presence of labyrinthine elements throughout Steven Millhauser’s short fiction. Millhauser’s labyrinths are either described spatially and/or suggested in his narrative form; they are, in other words, spatial and/or discursive. Millhauser’s spatial labyrinths (which I refer to as ‘architecture’ stories) involve the lengthy description of some immense or underground structure. The structures are fantastic in their size and often seem infinite in scale. These labyrinths are quite literal. Millhauser’s discursive labyrinths demonstrate the labyrinthine primarily through a forking, branching and repetitive narrative form. Millhauser’s use of the labyrinth is at once the same and different than preceding generations of short fiction. Postmodern short fiction in the 1960’s and 70’s used labyrinthine elements to draw the reader’s attention to the story’s textuality. Millhauser, too, writes in the experimental/fantastic mode, but to different ends. The devices of metafiction and realism are employed in his short fiction as agents of investigating and expressing two competing visions of reality. Using the ‘tricks’ and techniques of postmodern metafiction in tandem with realistic detail, Steven Millhauser’s labyrinthine fiction adjusts and reapplies the experimental short story to new ends: real-world applications and thematic expression.Item The Queer Use of Communal Women in Borges' "El muerto" and "La intrusa"(Hispanófila, 1999) Brant, Herbert J.