Magic often is used against the established order. Collective symbols and myths rather than individual ones haunt the work. The fiction in form and language often embraces the carnivalesque. Magical realism, then, calls on certain reading strategies: Magical realism has a tendency to defamiliarize the scene for readers; readers learn that they have not come entirely ready to understand the situation, that what we thought we knew is found to be strange, for it has something entirely unexpected to teach us.
Magical realism in some forms can be understood as a post-colonial move that seeks to resist European notions of naturalism or realism. Ultimately magical realism uses magical elements to make a point about reality. This is as opposed to stories that are solidly in the fantasy or sci-fi genres which are often separate from our own reality. There is a distortion effect in the very fiber of the prose that forces the reader to question what is real and often opens up avenues of reality we may not have thought possible before reading the story.
The realities being questioned can be societal, familial, mental, and emotional, just to name a few. To get a taste for the options available, below are a sampling of some of the variety of books that have been labeled as magical realism. If you are completely unfamiliar with magical realism there are some additional excellent books that will introduce you to the genre and many books that push the boundaries of the genre.
This book will be on every list about magical realism that is ever written. Not only is it a beautiful piece of literature but it has influenced many authors, particularly in the realm of magical realism. Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fell in love when they were young but Fermina married someone else and Florentino focused on business and affairs. Like Water For Chocolate is a great example of magical realism being used to manifest inner, normally repressed emotions in physical world.
It acts as a coup against the social expectations placed upon the characters. Tita, the youngest daughter of the La Garza family, has been forbidden to marry. This is the world of magical realism. It is like a fun and exciting magical carpet ride through the bustling streets of New York City.
Still confused? Get a clear definition of magical realism through examples of famous books that exemplify this genre. As the name would suggest, magical realism is a combination of realistic fiction with magical moments weaved into it. For example, in the book Beloved by Toni Morrison , the character Sethe is haunted by the spirit of her daughter. However, while Morrison magically weaves this haunting, the rest of the story is set in the real world and around real events that happened to slaves in America.
For more typical characteristics you can find in magical realism, keep reading! While magical realism can vary by authors, this genre typically employs a few different characteristic plot devices.
Understanding and classifying magical realism can get tricky sometimes. However, there are a few famous magical realism examples in literature that really exemplify this genre. However, it is done through a character born at the exact time of independence, who just happens to be a telepath.
During the s and 70s, Latin America was in a period of political turmoil because of diplomatic strategies created by the Cold War. Writers in the region became unified around a common desire for nationalization after the Cuban Revolution in , when the eyes of the world turned to Latin America. One of the hallmarks of the Latin American boom and the popularity of the novels within this time period was the use of magical realism.
Since then, many authors from around the world have used magical realism in their writings, but the most popular works of the genre continue to be from the Latin American boom. From the beginning, magical realism has been a consistently debated topic. Initially, much of the criticism around magical realism has centered around the history and usage of the term itself , instead of the actual movement. Some believed the art movement should get the name, others the literary movement.
Because the line between magical realism and fantasy, realism, "the marvelous," and surrealism is so fuzzy, many critics like Angel Flores at Queens college, have argued over whether or not certain writers can be considered magical realists. For example, even though Alejo Carpentier was the first to bring the term "magical realism" into Latin American literature, critics like Howard M.
Fraser at the University of North Carolina have argued over whether or not his work can be classified as magical realism instead of simply fantastical. Many of these debates center around whether a given work should be recognized as literature as opposed to entertainment.
Unlike fantasy and commercial fiction, magical realism is considered literary fiction instead of genre fiction, making it more reputable in the academic landscape, and more likely to win awards. In the case of Alejo Carpentier, because he wrote before the rise of magical realism, his work does not neatly fit into the genre.
Additionally, there have been cultural debates raised by Wendy B. Faris of the University of Texas at Arlington over magical realism and whether non-Latin American writers have appropriated it.
Latin American writers want to claim their movement as the origin, the home, and the only true birthplace of magical realism. Because magical realism was popularized in countries that had been colonized, scholars like Brahim Barhoun of the University of Madrid see the adoption of magical realism into mainstream literature by commercial writers as cultural appropriation.
Western scholars like Eastern Illinois University's Gary Aylesworth want to group the magical realists in with Western postmodernist writers. Many writers could be considered both postmodernist and magical realist, but because much of the foundational national literary identity of Latin America hinges on magical realism, the controversy takes on significant social import, given the historical tendency of the literary establishment to ignore or belittle the work of non-Western writers.
But then again, Maria Takolander of Deakin University argues that the whole movement relies on "fakery" by presenting the lives of Latin Americans in fantastical terms and playing the fantasy off as somehow truer to their lives.
Takolander notes that this isn't necessarily a criticism of magical realism so much as those who attempt to use it to understand real Latin American cultures. It can be. When magical realism made the transition from a word in a book in Europe to a literary genre in South and Central America, it also made a transition from a visually responsive genre to politically charged literature.
Many, like Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier , argued that magical realism was a natural fit for the Americas because indigenous communities there often did not draw as fixed of a line between the natural and the supernatural as their European counterparts. In this quote Marquez sums up several of the major political issues that stem out of magical realism, the first being that fantasy has always been a part of the Latin American perspective, and that magical realism is not a colonial idea from Europe.
It also proclaims a nationalistic sentiment: that Latin America has a culture, a life, and a purpose outside of being a colony. In the 's, as the world was beginning to nationalize, this was a statement for Latin American independence in the height of Cold War politics.
Magical realism in Latin America was often used by writers like Garcia Marquez to tell the stories of those on the fringes of society, which inherently became a critique of political power and influential people. Magical realism implicitly critiques society, and particularly critiques the elite because magical realism often tells the stories of people without wealth instead of focusing on the royalty of a region..
As a genre, magical realism has been used to critique politics from anti-imperialist, Marxist, feminist, and a combination of all three perspectives. What unites these writes politically is that they wrote from the margins of society, outside of the dominant power structures and central cultural centers.
Like most writers, Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote in many different styles and genre throughout the breadth of his career.
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