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Copyright of Question (1669-6581) is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos is the property of Asociacion Canadiense de Hispanistas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This essay seeks to show the way Jorge Luis Borges thinks about the concept of classical text in his essays. In general, Borges' position could be described as 'counter-canonical', as a will to desacralize classical texts through a number of discursive strategies. Among them, there is an emphasis on the transformational capacity of the act of reading, and on the multiplicity of language itself, which makes it impossible for a text be considered, a priori, as 'predetermined' or perfectly coherent. Through Borges' readings of the Quijote and Dante's Commedia, it is possible to see his will to work with canonical texts in fragmentary, partial, even contradictory ways that deny the possibility of producing perfect and monumental texts and, in the process, create irreverent, dynamic and imaginative readings of the works of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals first with Borges' reception as a canonic author, a goal which he aimed at since the Thirties by questioning generic classifications and national literature, and from the view of a rewriting's poetic. The central corpus of the work, Borges and the Spanish literature he disliked, renders an unfixed and hedonist canon, based on his own aesthetics, and resting on two points: the exercise of literature, and the various metaphysics within it. Borges' corpus rescues a remarkably scanty number of names: Unamuno, Quevedo and the Baroque, Cervantes and especially the Quijote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]