The short stories of Jorge Luis Borges are representative of a major trend in twentieth-century fiction which concentrates on aesthetic rather than moral issues. Borges himself has stressed the essentially amoral and literary perspective which distinguishes his work from that of more ethically oriented writers: "I want to make it quite clear that I am not, nor have I ever been, what used to be called a preacher of parables … and is now known as a committed writer." The committed writer, for Borges, is one whose ethical preoccupations not only dominate, but dictate a creative style which invariably "declines into allegory." In contrast to such morally didactic literature, Borges presents his own stories as mere efforts to entertain or to move, but not to persuade. He expresses impatience not only with the aggressively didactic writer, but also with those readers who approach literature expecting symbols or lessons, and...