Compositional Convergence in Whitman and Borges

Abstract

Abstract:

Jorge Luis Borges's interest in and admiration for Walt Whitman has been well-documented and studied. However, there has been no consideration of the overlaps in their writing practices. In this paper, I place two early manuscripts, one by Whitman (1855) and another by Borges (c. 1929), in conversation as a way to highlight their shared compositional methods. In particular, I show how their conception of physical books exhibits what I call compositional convergence, or the independent evolution of similar ways of thinking about the structure of books in different moments in time.