Editing Averroes's Search

{{Infobox short story | <!-- See [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels]] or [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Books]] -->
| name          = Averroës's Search
| title_orig    = La Busca de Averroes
| translator    = 
| author        = [[Jorge Luis Borges]]
| country       = [[Argentina]]
| language      = [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
| series        = 
| genre         = [[Historical fiction|Historical]] [[short story]]
| published_in  = ''[[sur (magazine)|Sur]]''
| publisher     = 
| media_type    = Print
| pub_date      = June 1947
| english_pub_date =
| preceded_by   = 
| followed_by   = 
}}

[[File:Statue_of_Averroes_(Córdoba)_-_BAE09705.jpg | thumb | right | Statue of Averroes in Cordoba]]
"'''Averroës's Search'''" (original [[Spanish language|Spanish]] title: "La Busca de Averroes") is a [[1947 in literature|1947]] short story by the Argentine writer [[Jorge Luis Borges]]. Originally published in the magazine ''[[Sur (magazine)|Sur]]'', it was later included in his second anthology of short stories, ''[[El Aleph (book)|El Aleph]]''.

==Plot summary==
The story imagines the difficulty of [[Averroës]], the famed [[Early Islamic philosophy|Islamic philosopher]] and translator, in translating Aristotle's [[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]] because he was not able to understand what a [[theatre|play]] was, owing to the absence of live theatrical performances from Averroës' cultural milieu, in contrast to that of ancient Greece.  In the story, Averroës casually observes some children play-acting, then later hears a traveler ineptly describe an actual theatrical performance he once saw in a distant land, but still fails to understand that the tragedies and comedies of which Aristotle writes are a kind of performance art, rather than merely literature.

The process of writing the story is meant to parallel the events in the story itself; Borges writes in an afterword to the story that his attempt to understand Averroës was as doomed as Averroës's attempt to understand drama. "I felt that the work mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more material than a few snatches from [[Ernest Renan|Renan]], [[Edward William Lane|Lane]], and [[Miguel Asín Palacios|Asín Palacios]]."

==Sources==
* {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oSeMDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA28|title=Stepping in the Same River Twice: Replication in Biological Research|pages=28–30|editor1-first=Ayelet|editor1-last=Shavit|editor2-first=Aaron M.|editor2-last=Ellison|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2017|isbn=978-0-300-20954-9}}

{{Jorge Luis Borges}}

[[Category:Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges]]
[[Category:1947 short stories]]
[[Category:Works originally published in Sur (magazine)]]
[[Category:Cultural depictions of Averroes]]