Essay Assignment #2: A Literary Essay on Borges

For the last writing assignment I gave you a very tightly defined topic to write about. This assignment is more speculative and open-ended. Write a 1000 word essay on some of the ways Borges uses mathematical themes in his stories. Your essay should make substantive reference to at least three of the stories.

As defined so far, this topic is too broad for an essay of this length. Part of your task is to narrow your topic enough that you can cover it adequately in 1000 words. Here are some suggestions for ways to craft a narrow theme:

• You might look for only certain mathematical themes (bifurcation, the continuum, randomness & chance, countable infinity, etc.)
• You might look for only certain literary themes Borges is addressing: religion or spirituality, the literary life or life of the mind, a sense of specificity in place and time, etc.
• You might look for the emotional effects Borges is striving to achieve by using mathematical terms and themes: awe, dread, helplessness, love, etc.
• Find some other specific approach to seeing mathematical themes in Borges!

There are many more stories in the Borges collection that include mathematical references, and you might want to read some more to find stories helpful to you in writing your paper. Specifically, I might suggest

· Death and the Compass

· The Secret Miracle

· The Immortal

· The House of Asterion

· Averroës’ Search

· Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth

· The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths

· The Aleph

· The Disk

I’m sure there are others you could use!

It is perfectly sufficient to write this essay using only the Borges stories, and what you know about mathematics. Please include specific citations to the stories using footnotes or endnotes. If you do feel it important or interesting, you may certainly make use of critical commentaries on Borges --- this is not necessary, but if you do, please cite your sources. Follow the Honor Code and do no plagarize!

This essay is due by 9 a.m. on Friday October 21^st.