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| The story elaborates on a concept in ]'s '']'': a fictional ] that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." One of Carroll's characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well." | The story elaborates on a concept in ]'s '']'': a fictional ] that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." One of Carroll's characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well." | ||
| The Borges story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658", imagines an empire where the science of ] becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. "ucceeding Generations… came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome... In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar..."<ref>J. L. Borges, |
The Borges story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658", imagines an empire where the science of ] becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. "ucceeding Generations… came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome... In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar..."<ref>J. L. Borges, ''A Universal History of Infamy'' (translated by Norman Thomas de Giovanni), Penguin Books, London, 1975. ISBN 0-14-003959-7.</ref> | ||
| ==Publication history== | ==Publication history== | ||
| The story was first published in the March 1946 edition of ''Los Anales de Buenos Aires'', ''año 1, no. 3'' as part of a piece called "Museo" under the name B. Lynch Davis, a joint ] of Borges and ]; that piece credited it as the work of "Suarez Miranda". It was collected later that year in the 1946 second Argentinian edition of Borges's ''Historia universal de la infamia'' ('']'').<ref name=bibliography> |
The story was first published in the March 1946 edition of ''Los Anales de Buenos Aires'', ''año 1, no. 3'' as part of a piece called "Museo" under the name B. Lynch Davis, a joint ] of Borges and ]; that piece credited it as the work of "Suarez Miranda". It was collected later that year in the 1946 second Argentinian edition of Borges's ''Historia universal de la infamia'' ('']'').<ref name=bibliography>http://www.borges.pitt.edu/1946</ref> It is no longer included in current Spanish editions of the ''Historia universal de la infamia'', as since 1961 it has appeared as part of ''El hacedor''.<ref>http://www.borges.pitt.edu/node/144</ref> | ||
| The names "B. Lynch Davis" and "Suarez Miranda" would be combined later |
The names "B. Lynch Davis" and "Suarez Miranda" would be combined later in 1946 to form another pseudonym, B. Suarez Lynch, under which Borges and Bioy Casares published ''Un modelo para la muerte'', a collection of detective fiction.<ref name=bibliography /> | ||
| ==Notes== | ==Notes== | ||
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| The story is readily available in its entirety online: | The story is readily available in its entirety online: | ||
| * | * | ||
| *. This is the translation quoted above. | |||
| * | * | ||
Revision as of 00:22, 14 December 2011
"On Exactitude in Science" or "On Rigor in Science" (the original Spanish-language title is "Del rigor en la ciencia") is a one-paragraph short story by Jorge Luis Borges, about the map/territory relation, written in the form of a literary forgery.
Plot
The story elaborates on a concept in Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." One of Carroll's characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."
The Borges story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658", imagines an empire where the science of cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. "ucceeding Generations… came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome... In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar..."
Publication history
The story was first published in the March 1946 edition of Los Anales de Buenos Aires, año 1, no. 3 as part of a piece called "Museo" under the name B. Lynch Davis, a joint pseudonym of Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares; that piece credited it as the work of "Suarez Miranda". It was collected later that year in the 1946 second Argentinian edition of Borges's Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy). It is no longer included in current Spanish editions of the Historia universal de la infamia, as since 1961 it has appeared as part of El hacedor.
The names "B. Lynch Davis" and "Suarez Miranda" would be combined later in 1946 to form another pseudonym, B. Suarez Lynch, under which Borges and Bioy Casares published Un modelo para la muerte, a collection of detective fiction.
Notes
- J. L. Borges, A Universal History of Infamy (translated by Norman Thomas de Giovanni), Penguin Books, London, 1975. ISBN 0-14-003959-7.
- ^ http://www.borges.pitt.edu/1946
- http://www.borges.pitt.edu/node/144
External links
The story is readily available in its entirety online:
| Jorge Luis Borges | |
|---|---|
| Bibliography | |
| Original short story collections | |
| Essays | |
| Other works | |
| Related | |