Imagining and Undoing Masculinity in Jorge Luis Borges's Poetry and Prose Fiction

Abstract

From the ever-present attempts to vindicate his father to his notoriously unsuccessful experiences with women, from his nostalgic elegies for past heroism to a host of investigations into moments that define lives, Jorge Luis Borges's literature has always staged a sort of laboratory of masculinity. This chapter will analyze stories and poems by Borges that explicitly address the paradoxes and shortcomings of masculinity. Special attention is devoted to how Borges traces a genealogy of the male code of honor only to find that all particular subjects placed in a position to uphold that code end up failing in their endeavors. One of the guiding threads of the chapter is the contrast between the heroic portrayal of the past in his elegiac poetry and the fascination with the wretched, marginal man depicted in prose pieces such as “Historia de la esquina rosada” and “Historia de Rosendo Juárez.”