Fiction in Pain: Mourning and Melancholia in Borges’s Emma Zunz and El Aleph
Author:
Galván-Díaz Félix Joaquín
Abstract
In this article, I analyze the representation of mourning and melancholia in Jorge Luis Borges’s “Emma Zunz” and “El Aleph.” First, I propose a reconceptualization of mourning and melancholia. Starting from Freud’s premises, I rethink both concepts to argue that mourning is a social activity anchored on social frames and that melancholia comes from the impossibility of the social frame of mourning to carry and signify a loss. Then, I discuss how the short stories represent mourning processes that, in both cases, are difficult to achieve since the social conditions do not allow the mourner to grieve.
Publisher
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
Subject
Literature and Literary Theory,Linguistics and Language,Cultural Studies