As a long-time fan of Borges, stumbling across this lecture series was an absolute delight, and is a must read for anyone who enjoys Borges.  Here is Borges the professor, wry, intelligent and passionate about his chosen subject.  

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given his disdain for arbitrary categorization, Borges takes a very idiosyncratic approach to teaching English literature.  He starts normally enough with Old English stalwarts of poetry such as Beowulf and continues through medieval poetry, but soon enough veers into his own personal taste.  He skips a good four hundred years (including Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton) from the end of the Medieval era to Johnson and Boswell, and from there continues to skip merrily through various writers, elevating his personal favorites over more traditional picks from the Anglo canon.  The result is not so much a lecture on the history and significance of English literature, but rather a conversation Borges is having with his students to get them interested in the subject.  It is Borges sharing his love of his favorite authors with the class, and for that reason it is invaluable to anyone looking to gain insight into Borges as a writer and (I suspect more importantly to him) a reader)

While the translators do an admirable job with footnotes providing necessary context, I do have to knock them down one start for the (frankly inexcusable) lack of a reading list or bibliography of the works Borges cites and discusses in the course.  Given the scope of the class Borges understandably makes references to a wide range of books and poems, and it’s incredibly annoying to not have a handing list of them to refer to and look up at the end.  It’s surprising such an obvious inclusion wasn’t made, but oh well.