SOURCE: “Borges and Browning: A Dramatic Dialogue,” in Borges the Poet, edited by Carlos Cortinez, The University of Arkansas Press, 1986, pp. 207–17.

In the following essay, Jones explores Borges's debt to Robert Browning,, especially, in his adaptation of the dramatic monologue.

In a rather backhanded tribute to Robert Browning, Jorge Luis Borges comments that “si hubiera sido un buen escritor de prosa, creo que no dudaríamos que Browning sería el precursor de la que llamamos literatura moderna.”¹ In a writer who has repeatedly emphasized his preference for plot over character and his suspicions about the nonexistence of personality, this interest in the work of a poet who described himself as “more interested in individuals than abstract problems”² is curious, yet despite his claim in Introducción a la literatura inglesa of this widely accepted view of Browning, Borges seems drawn to a different reading. For him, Browning...