Reading aloud and commented to teach (to enjoy) Borges

Abstract

The first part of this work seeks to explain why both the personal figure of Jorge Luis Borges and his own work have generated some kind of suspicion or "fear". The political prejudices towards his person, on the one hand, and the complex relationships between the difficulty and pleasure that arise in the treatment of his texts, on the other, are two interconnected dimensions that participate in the configuration of a cultural representation of Borges in his own country, Argentina. As a method to overcome "the fear of Borges", in the second part it is shown how very diverse and heterogeneous productions of popular culture can become access routes to start dealing with themes of his work. In the third part, which is the core of this work, we expose the development of a reseatch project that used a chapter of the cartoon series "The Simpsons" as a way of accessing a text by Borges. The results offer empirical evidence in favor of the two hypotheses evaluated. First, a preparatory task around a production of popular culture seems to favor global understanding. Secondly, reading aloud with commentary seems to favor not only general comprehension but also enjoyment of the texts.