Ancestral Roots. Anglosajón in J.L. Borges

This chapter explores Jorge Luis Borges’s unique relationship with Old English language and literature, often referred to as anglosajón. Drawing on Borges’s own reflections on blindness and his ancestral connections, I try to demonstrate how these factors influenced his intellectual and creative pursuits. Borges’s fascination with Early medieval English poetry was not merely academic but deeply intertwined with his metaphysical views on time, identity, and immortality. By embracing anglosajón, Borges sought to reconnect with his ancestral roots and explore a cyclical notion of time and self, seeing language as a bridge to a profound, eternal past.