Borges’s Lectures

Abstract

Abstract This chapter analyzes Borges’s lecturing work between 1949 and 1955, focusing on his travels to the interior of Argentina and to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo. First are described the personal obstacles that Borges had to face to take on this new challenge, based on information recovered from biographies and testimonies. Then, the political context is analyzed with respect to how Perón’s rise to power played a decisive role in Borges’s career change. Finally, the chapter reviews the numbers that reveal a significant change in his income and how those figures impacted his subjectivity. Borges’s name is thus included among the great orators of Argentine literature, while at the same time scholars can reflect on the magnitude and the particularities of this orality as it related to the rest of his literary production with the goal of attaining a more nuanced vision of his complete works.