12/13/20, 1(12 AM Keatsians in Argentina: Borgesʼs Nightingale and Cortázarʼs Chameleon | Romantic Circles Page 1 of 27 https://romantic-circles.org/praxis/latinam/praxis.2020.latinam.ramirez.html A refereed scholarly Website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture Keatsians in Argentina: Borges’s Nightingale and Cortázar’s Chameleon Marco Ramírez Rojas City University of New York, Lehman College 1. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many Latin American writers were fascinated by the aristocratic and legendary lives of British Romantic poets such as Byron and Shelley. Their poetic works had not only a literary but also a political impact in Spanish speaking countries, where they were seen as paradigmatic images of rebellion, independence, and revolution. These figures were incorporated and imported into the Latin American imagination as early as 1850 (as shown in this volume’s essays by Hart, Payán, and Insausti). Keats, however, did not enjoy the same celebrity; his short life was full of financial trouble, and it was very unlikely that he would inspire the imagination of the Latin American writers of the time, so avid of glamorous, Romantic heroism. His afterlives in this continent would not spark until the 1950s, ROMANTIC CIRCLES STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT. READ OUR STATEMENT.