Preface and Acknowledgments

This special issue of the Old English Newsletter constitutes a rare fortuitous result of the current pandemic. When I embarked on the project in midsummer 2020, my focus was inviting people who had already published on Jorge Luis Borges' Germanic medievalism to revisit their files and see if they had something there, however small, that they felt should see the light of scholarly day. Over time the focus expanded as one scholar led me to another, and the result here is a splendid feast of Borges—in my mind entitled "A Pandemonium of Borges." I am deeply grateful to those contributors who agreed to write in the early days of the project, and I am equally grateful to those who came on board in the waning months of the year. This project was also unusual because highly collaborative: many scans of materials in one collection shot electronically across the globe because someone elsewhere needed something, and in a number of cases one contributor led me to another scholar, who might or might not be available, but might well have other suggestions. Some ideas perforce shifted under the constraints of library availability or time crunches. Some contributors had truly dire family situations or teaching difficulties, with relatives or friends succumbing to covid or children suddenly at home for schooling. As a result, every paper here is a triumph, and I am deeply grateful to each and every contributor for their perseverance and the excellence of the work that they accomplished.

Along the way, my greatest help in finding contributions came from Constanza Burucúa of the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Western Ontario. At a point when I was preparing to work with a small group of contributors, she found more avenues to travel and helped expand the collection significantly.

My greatest debt for the volume is to Stephen Harris, who agreed to the proposal that the Old English Newsletter should publish scholarly contributions as well as its major ongoing commitments, despite the amount of extra work this would require of him. He has an abiding interest in this topic, and also winkled out options for contributors.

Rarely do those of us interested in early medieval England get to feel that we are uncovering exciting new modern scholarship, but the papers here really do unveil many elements of Borges' engagement with literature in general, and Old English and Old Norse in particular. Bruca wel or Goce bien.

M. J. Toswell

University of Western Ontario