On the Edge of Conventional Maps: the Southern Mythologies of Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges and Australia’s Gerald Murnane

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many critics have observed affinities between the experimental fictions of Australia’s Gerald Murnane (1939–) and the writing of the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). This extended comparative study considers two main points of intersection. Firstly, both these writers explore the literary potential of ideas drawn from radical idealist philosophy. Secondly, both writers repeatedly converse with European modernist texts and authors from the perspective of peripheral modernity. Here, I reread a selection of iconic Borges stories and essays, including “Funes el memorioso” and “Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote,” alongside texts from across Murnane’s career. The Argentine and Australian writers’ radical idealist poetics work to provincialize the metropolitan discourse of modernism, and to destabilize Northern critical canons and literary genres.