Literature as a result of the writers’ creating the fictional world allows readers’ examining the combination of the real world’s elements and the effects of the writer’s imagination. Postmodernism in literature have a lot of peculiarities according to which it is possible to define this or that work as a piece of postmodern literature. Postmodern literature is based on using fantastic images, linguistic riddles, intertextuality, and the combination of genres. From this point, the figure of Jorge Luis Borges can be discussed as influential with references to the development of postmodern literature. The book Labyrinths is the collection of short stories written by Borges, and it is one of the most vivid examples of postmodern literature where realty is combined with the author’s imagination producing the elements of magic realism, where texts are interdependent and make the specific universe with a lot of intertextual references, and images are both real and fantastic.
Postmodernism began its development after World War II, and it reflected the definite aspects of Modernism with rejecting the principles of Realism. However, the new reality presented the fundament for the progress of Postmodernism as the unique movement in art and culture with accentuating the philosophical and metaphysical ideas (McHale). The title of Labyrinths can be discussed as reflecting the main idea of postmodern literature because while reading postmodern works, the readers have to go through a lot of textual labyrinths which make stories multidimensional (Nicol).
There are no ordinary or insignificant elements in Borges’ stories. In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, the author represents the real world with the help of referring to the planet Tlön and the texts which are associated with the protagonist’s search of the information about the planet. The idea of the text’s significance and the text as a labyrinth is developed in “The Garden of Forking Paths” where Borges states that “everyone imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing” (Borges 25). Moreover, Borges continues to develop the viewpoint in his story “The Library of Babel”, and now it is possible to imagine the whole universe as a library where “there are no two identical books” (Borges 54). It is typical for many postmodern writers to make accents on texts in different ways even with concentrating on metafiction (Wilson).
If the other stories by Borges present his metaphysical vision of reality and its connection with the fantastic world and texts with providing a lot of paradoxes, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote” can be considered as the complex postmodern story which reflects a great number of postmodern tendencies. Thus, the story is based on the paradox of creating the other book about Don Quixote which is identical to Cervantes’ work, but it is unique and original. The figure of Pierre Menard can be discussed as a kind of the literary mystification used in the literary work (Sarlo). Intertextuality is the main feature of the story. Furthermore, the references to Cervantes’ book were typical for many postmodern writers (Laín Corona).
Jorge Luis Borges’ collection of short stories known as Labyrinths reflects the most influential features of postmodern literature where the reality is combined with illusions and paradoxes. Detective elements and mystifications are used to compose the plot, texts can be discussed at several levels, and they also can be perceived as the independent universes. In his stories, Borges created real images in fantastic surroundings and paid attention to experiments in genres and styles for developing his vision of magic realism.
Works Cited
Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. USA: New Directions, 2007. Print.
Laín Corona, Guillermo. “Borges and Cervantes: Truth and Falsehood in the Narration”. Neophilologus, 93 (2009): 421-37. Print.
McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. USA: Routledge, 1987. Print.
Nicol, Bran. The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction. USA: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.
Sarlo, Beatriz. Jorge Luis Borges: a Writer on the Edge. London: Verso, 2007. Print.
Wilson, Jason. Jorge Luis Borges. London: Reaktion Books, 2006. Print.