Borges, Buddhism and World Literature A Morphology of Renunciation Tales /

• Main Author: Jullien, Dominique (Author, http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
• Edition: 1st ed. 2019.
• Series: Literatures of the Americas
• Subjects: Latin American literature.; Comparative literature.; Literature, Modern-20th century.; Latin American/Caribbean Literature.; Comparative Literature.; Twentieth-Century Literature.

 This book follows the renunciation story in Borges and beyond, arguing for its centrality as a Borgesian compositional trope and as a Borgesian prism for reading a global constellation of texts. The renunciation story at the heart of Buddhism, that of a king who leaves his palace to become an ascetic, fascinated Borges because of its cross-cultural adaptability and metamorphic nature, and because it resonated so powerfully across philosophy, politics and aesthetics. From the story and its many variants, Borges's essays formulated a 'morphological' conception of literature (borrowing the idea from Goethe), whereby a potentially infinite number of stories were generated by transformation of a finite number of 'archetypes'. The king-and-ascetic encounter also tells a powerful political story, setting up a confrontation between power and authority; Borges's own political predicament is explored against the rich background of truth-telling renouncers. In its poetic variant, the renunciation archetype morphs into stories about art and artists, with renunciation a key requirement of the creative process: the discussion weaves in and out of Borges to highlight modern writers' debt to asceticism. Ultimately, the enigmatic appeal of the renunciation story aligns it with the open-endedness of modern parables. 

 1. Introduction: Leaving the Palace -- 2. A Borgesian Morphology: Renunciation, Morphology and World Literature -- 3. A Lesson for the King: Renunciation and Politics -- 4. From Ascetic to Poet: Poetic Renunciation -- 5. Modernity's Enigmatic Parables of Renunciation -- 6. Conclusion: Renunciation Stories and Wandering Kings.