Games of Inheritance

Kabbalah, Tradition, and Authorship in Jorge Luis Borges

Yitzhak Lewis (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

236 Seiten

2025
Rutgers University Press (Verlag)
978-1-9788-4395-0 (ISBN)

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Games of Inheritance explores the thought of Argentine author and public intellectual Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) on questions of authorship and literary tradition. The book focuses on Borges’s engagement with Jewish literary and intellectual traditions, highlighting the role of this engagement in developing and expressing his views on these questions. The book argues that the primary relevance of Borges’s persistent reference to “the Judaic” is not for understanding his attitude toward Jews and Judaism but for understanding his position in contemporary Argentinian debates about nationalism and literature, empire and postcolonialism, and populism and aesthetics. By broadening the frame of Borges and the Judaic, this book shifts the scholarly focus to the poetic utility of Borges’s engagement with Jewish literary and intellectual traditions. This allows a better understanding of the nuance of his views on the issues that most animate his oeuvre: authorship and writing, literature and tradition.

YITZHAK LEWIS is an assistant professor of humanities at Duke Kunshan University, China. He is the author of A Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Game of Inheritance

The Judaic
From Kabbalah to Tradition (the Structure of the Argument)
Methodological Notes

Section I: Kabbalah

Chapter 1: Kabbalistic Stories

Kabbalistic Methodologies
Encountering Scholem

Chapter 2: The Ideal Author

A Vindication of the Author
What is an Author?
Another Creation Story
Cabal and Complot
A Comment on Literature and Conspiracy

Chapter 3: The Ideal Reader

Borges’ Parable of the Cave
The Narrator and the Kabbalist
Kabbalah and Tradition

Section II: Tradition

Chapter 4: The Trouble with Tradition

Literary Tradition
Jewish Tradition
National Tradition
Tradition in the Historical Sense
The Postwar Question of Tradition

Chapter 5: What is Jewish Tradition?

First Rejection: The Essential
Second Rejection: The Original
Third Rejection: The Rupture
The Departure from Tradition
Veblen, An Imbalanced Analogy
Veblen, An Evolving Analogy

Chapter 6: Tradition and Local Color

Between Jewish and Israeli Literature
“The Memory of Israel is in Agnon”
Between Tradition and Local Color
Bring on the Camels

Section III: Authorship

Chapter 7: Authorship and its Metaphors

Hasidism
The Sphere of In-Between
Kafka and his Precursors
A New Metaphor for Authorship

Conclusion: Borges and his Kafkaesque Precursors

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Acknowledgments
ix
Introduction: A Game of Inheritance 1
The Judaic 4
From Kabbalah to Tradition (the Structure of the Argument) 7
Methodological Notes 10
Part I Kabbalah
1 Kabbalistic Stories 15
Kabbalistic Methodologies 17
Encountering Scholem 22
2 The Ideal Author 29
A Vindication of the Author 31
What is an Author? 33
Another Creation Story 37
Cabal and Complot 39
A Comment on Literature
and Conspiracy 42
3 The Ideal Reader 51
Borges’s Parable of the Cave 54
The Narrator and the Kabbalist 59
Kabbalah and Tradition 68
Part II Tradition
4 The Trouble
with Tradition 73
Literary Tradition 75
Jewish Tradition 78
National Tradition 79
Tradition in the Historical Sense 82
The Postwar Question of Tradition 87
5 What Is Jewish Tradition? 91
First Rejection: The Essential 93
Second Rejection: The Original 95
Third Rejection: The Rupture 96
The Departure from Tradition 98
Veblen, an Imbalanced Analogy 104
Veblen, an Evolving Analogy 108
6 Tradition and Local Color 113
Between Jewish and Israeli Literature
115
“The Memory of Israel Is in Agnon” 118
Between Tradition and Local Color 123
Bring on the Camels 126
Part III Authorship
7 Authorship and Its Metaphors
135
Hasidism 138
The Sphere of In-Between
142
Kafka and His Precursors 144
A New Metaphor
for Authorship 148
Conclusion: Borges and His Kafkaesque Precursors 155
A Sidenote on Another Precursor 157
Jewish Literature
after
Borges 158
Notes 161
Bibliography 195
Index 000

Erscheinungsdatum	14.05.2025
Verlagsort	New Brunswick NJ
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	286 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Judentum
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
ISBN-10	1-9788-4395-X / 197884395X
ISBN-13	978-1-9788-4395-0 / 9781978843950
Zustand	Neuware