The Collective Memory in El Evangelio Según Marcos of J. L. Borges

Abstract

The cultural memory has become a focus in studies of sociology, anthropology, history, among the other disciplines. It also endows new perspective on the criticism of literature. The concept of collective memory, developed by the French sociology Maurice Halbwachs at the first of the twenty century, constitutes the fundamental notion in the investigation about the cultural memory. There exists a collective memory and social frameworks for the memory. The collective memory is the instruments used to reconstruct an image of the past which is in accord, in each epoch, with the predominant thoughts of the society.

Jorge Luis Borges is publicly recognized as one of the most important writers of the Spanish-language literature. One of the characteristics of the Borge’s short stories is the constant and abundant references to other texts. In this paper, we pick the short story “El Evangelio SegÚn Marcos (The Gospel According to Mark)” as a case to analyze the cultural collective memory in the text and it´s meanings.