I’m fascinated with Borges because he seems to encapsulate the concept of critical irrealism so well. Often, critical irrealists do this through the devices of fantasy, gothic fiction, and surrealism. Instead of assuming that literature can represent reality objectively, as all realist fiction does at least implicitly, the critical irrealist demonstrates the ways reality cannot be trusted. Fortunately, the answer is quite simple.Ĭritical irrealism is basically a stance a writer takes towards reality. Now, you might be wondering what critical irrealism is. A new essay of mine has just been published with Graphite Publications! It builds off some ideas I express in my Master’s thesis, Fantasy as a Peripheral Modernism, specifically the concept of critical irrealism.Īs you may have guessed, the title is “The Critical Irrealism of Borges’s Aleph.” You may already be familiar with Jorge Luis Borges’s famous short story, “The Aleph.” If you aren’t, do yourself a favour and read it: it’s a phantasmagorical vision told in sophisticated prose and you won’t be disappointed.īack yet? Good.
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