Story of the Warrior and the Captive

"Story of the Warror and the Captive"
Author	Jorge Luis Borges
Original title	"Historia del Guerrero y la Cautiva"
Country	Argentina
Language	Spanish
Genre(s)	short story
Published in	El Aleph
Media type	Print
Publication date	1949

"Story of the Warrior and the Captive" (original Spanish "Historia del Guerrero y la cautiva") is a short story by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It first appeared in 1949 in the short story collection El Aleph and later appeared in Labyrinths.

Plot summary

The story compares two figures who eschewed their culture in favor of a foreign culture. The narrator first tells the story of Droctulft, a barbarian who, according to the historical writings of Paul the Deacon, abandoned the barbarian Lombards to join the Byzantine Army and defend the city of Ravenna.

The narrator then identifies himself as Borges (one of Borges's many forays into metafiction), and recounts a story that his grandmother had told him. He tells how his grandmother, an Englishwoman living in Buenos Aires in 1872, was introduced to another Englishwoman who, fifteen years earlier, had been taken captive by an indigenous tribe and wed to the chieftain. Borges's grandmother offers to protect her and retrieve her children, but the woman responds that she is happy with the natives and wishes to remain with them. Like Droctulft, she chose to leave the culture she was born into in favor of one completely alien to her.

External links

Jorge Luis Borges

Bibliography

Original
collections

A Universal History of Infamy	"On Exactitude in Science"

Ficciones	"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" "The Circular Ruins" "The Lottery in Babylon" "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" "The Library of Babel" "The Garden of Forking Paths" "Funes the Memorious" "The Form of the Sword" "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" "Death and the Compass" "The Secret Miracle" "Three Versions of Judas" "The End" "The Sect of the Phoenix" "The South"

The Aleph	"The Immortal" "The Dead Man" "The Theologians" "Emma Zunz" "The House of Asterion" "Deutsches Requiem" "Averroes's Search" "The Zahir" "The Writing of the God" "The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths" "The Wait" "The Aleph"

Otras Inquisiciones (1937–1952)	"The Analytical Language of John Wilkins"

Dreamtigers	"Borges and I"

Dr. Brodie's Report	"The Encounter" "The Gospel According to Mark"

The Book of Sand	"The Other" "Ulrikke" "The Congress" "There Are More Things" "The Disk" "The Book of Sand"

Shakespeare's Memory	"Blue Tigers" "Shakespeare's Memory"

Other works

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Story of the Warrior and the Captive

Plot summary

See also

External links