Dreams Within Dreams: Borges’ The Circular Ruins and the Postmodern Labyrinth

Abstract

Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Circular Ruins is a critical study concerning the approach of the post-modern literary theory. Positioned as a seminal narrative in the development of postmodern fiction, Borges's story addresses profound philosophical concerns related to identity, authorship, and the nature of reality. With the help of the qualitative textual analysis, the research examines the main postmodern concepts in the story, including simulacra and hyperreality, ontological instability, metafiction, intertextuality, magic realism, and fragmentation of the narrative. Resorting to the theoretical work of Jean Baudrillard, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Linda Hutcheon, Brian McHale, among other authors, the paper illustrates how the work of The Circular Ruins foreshadows and sums up major postmodern fears and aesthetics.

This can be seen in the fact that the protagonist of Borges who dreams of another human who happens to be a dream and then finds out he is also a dream, is a representative of what Baudrillard calls the simulacrum which has no beginning. The metafictional reflexivity can also be observed by the recursive structure of the story and self-referential nature of its narrative voice overstepping the issues of realism and the quest of a single narrative line. Also, the mythical and the cultural allusions demonstrated by Borges place the story in a tightly-conceived intertextual network supporting the theory of the death of the author presented by Roland Barthes. Ultimately, the research affirms Borges’s status as a literary precursor to postmodernism, highlighting the story's enduring relevance in discussions of identity, creation, and the instability of truth.