Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-30T09:47:52.695Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 29 - Argentina and Cuba: The Politics of Reception

from Part II - The Western Canon, the East, Contexts of Reception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2020

Robin Fiddian
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

Borges declared that a writer’s political views were circumstantial and should not interfere with his or her literary creation and reputation. However, the cases of Argentina and Cuba from the mid-1940s on illustrate the influence of context on the reception of his work. The chapter focuses on three periods: the mid-1940s, the mid-1950s, and the first decade of the Cuban Revolution of 1959. In Argentina, the failure of the jury to award Borges the National Literary Award in 1942 was politically motivated. In Cuba, the first critical text on Borges appeared in 1944 and was influenced by the attitude to culture of the Origenes group, led by J Lezama Lima. In the following decade, and after the overthrowing of Perón, Borges’s work was criticized for being out of touch with Argentine realities, whereas in Cuba, a new literary magazine, Ciclón, expressed support for his work. After the Cuban Revolution, Borges’s name continued to be mentioned; however, after 1968, he would be censored in the island for two decades. The chapter concludes that writers and c ritics tend to read other writers in relation with their own cultural credos or projects.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×