Introduction: Origins and Definitions
Most often associated with Latin America- but this is a limited definition.
The term has a long history, dating back to the 1920s and the discipline of Art History.
Also has a longer history in German philosophy.
German art critic- Franz Roh (1890-1965)- coined term ‘Magic Realism’- in terms of
post-expressionistic painting. About how we perceive objects- a ‘new objectivity’ >
signalled a new direction in painting- seeing world with new eyes.
Also important in literary innovation.
MR is engaged with philosophical questions of how we see the world.
o Its about alternative realities- seeing the world in new and exciting ways.
o How might we challenge ways of seeing the world?
Endowing everyday objects with a new significance.
MR is concerned with the magical qualities of living.
Note: the importance of the aftermath of WW1
Note: the influence of Roh’s work on Latin American writers.
Cuban Novelist- Alejo Carpentier- coined a new term- ‘The Marvelous Real’.
o MarvReal as representing a uniquely American form of MR.
o The marvellous is ‘lurking’ in realities of American time and place- magic is
inherent in the culture.
o Reality is already magical for Carpentier.
*** SO two definitions- related to specific cultural and geographical locations ***
SO MR- according to Angel Flores-combines elements of both traditions- and is an
‘amalgamation of realism and fantasy’.
BUT for Roe- the ‘magic’ lies in the style, and the ‘realism’ in the content and for
Flores- the ‘magic’ is in the content and the ‘realism’ is in the style.
o i.e. relaying of magical events as if they were commonplace.
o i.e. ‘realist’ depictions of ‘magical’ objects.
Bowers- science and rational thought are not adequate ways of describing the world
>> need a ‘Magical Realism’.
o MR questions the dominant ways of understanding the world > opening up
new possibilities.
o MR is a genre challenging realisms claim to truth.
o MR about exploring diverse realities.
Locations and Dislocations
MR is a type of Realism- remember this.
o Terry Eagleton- emphasises the importance of literary realism.
The realist novel represents one of the great revolutionary cultural forms of human history. In
the domain of culture, it has something like the importance of steam-power or electricity in the
material realm or of democracy in the political sphere. For art to depict the world in its
everyday, unregenerate state is now so familiar that it is impossible to recapture its shattering
originality when it first emerged.
-Terry Eagleton, The English Novel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 19.
MR novel is a reworking/ reimagining of the realist novel.
J. A. Cuddon- realism is about the everyday, the commonplace:
On the whole one tends to think of realism in terms of the everyday, the normal, the
pragmatic. More crudely, it suggests a jackets off, sleeves rolled up, a ‘no nonsense’
approach … In general this enormous body of literature displays what H. Levin has described
as that ‘willed tendency of art to approximate reality’. However, one can suggest that some
literature is more realistic than other literature … ‘More realistic’ in the sense of more down to
earth, closer to everyday life, and thus well within the experience of the legendary man on the
Clapham bus, or Clapham Man.
J.A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th edn (London:
Penguin, 1999), p. 729.
, BUT Eagleton- says ‘Realism’ is just another literary convention- another mode of
representation, which pretends that it is not a literary convention.
It is dangerous, then, to talk about realism as representing ‘life as it really is’, or ‘the
experience of the common people’. Both notions are too controversial to be used so lightly.
Realism is a matter of representation; and you cannot compare representations with ‘reality’
to check how realistic they are, since what we mean by ‘reality’ itself involves questions of
representation. - Eagleton, The English Novel, p. 10.
The realist novel wants to construct a world that a reader can understand. It aspires
to verisimilitude. The characters of the realist novel, were novel for their mere
ordinariness.
o Realist novel- a totalizing enterprise- seeks to offer a seamless, universal,
complete narrative:
Formal realism […] is the narrative embodiment of […] the premise, or primary convention,
that the novel is a full and authentic report of human experience, and is therefore under an
obligation to satisfy its reader with such details of the story as the individuality of the actors
concerned, the particulars of the times and places of their actions, details which are
represented through a more largely referential use of language than is common in other
literary forms.
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Pimlico,
2000; first published 1957), p. 32.
***MR is a blending of realist forms and pre-realist***
Literary Realism is limited because it precludes whatever is not considered to be
‘real’.
***MR is looking back at what LR precludes***:
Indeed, we may suppose that the widespread appeal of magical realist fiction today responds
not only to its innovative energy but also to its impulse to re-establish contact with traditions
temporarily eclipsed by the mimetic constraints of nineteenth- and twentieth-century realism.
Contemporary magical realist writers self-consciously depart from the conventions of magical
realism to enter and amplify other (diverted) currents of Western literature that flow from the
marvellous Greek pastoral and epic traditions to medieval dream visions to the romance and
Gothic fictions of the past century.
Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, ‘Introduction’, in Magical Realism: Theory,
History, Community, ed. Zamora and Faris (Durham: Duke UP, 1995), pp. 1-11 (p. 2).
‘El boom’ and the ‘new novel’
‘The Marvelous Real’ > Carpentier : the everyday environment is inherently magical in
terms of Latin American culture.
Landscape and geography are key ***
Language is important in Latin America- they speak ‘romance languages;.
LA has a long history: diverse population, ethnic and linguistic diversity, history of
colonial conquest etc.
o Colonialism: saw a merging of Europe and Latin America.
o LA as lurking on the margins of the European cultural imagination.
Because Latin America has a form of postcolonial relationship with Europe, and particularly in
relation to the colonial power of Spain from whence many of its inhabitants migrated, it has
had, until the mid-twentieth century, a relationship with Europe that placed it on the margins of
European perception, knowledge and culture. The shift away from a position of marginal
cultural production in which all things European were esteemed, coincided with the
development of magical realist fiction in Latin America.
-Maggie Ann, Magic(al) Realism (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 33.
Mid- twentieth century > ‘El boom’ in LA literature : started in the 1950s- influenced in
part by modernist European writers,
Most often associated with Latin America- but this is a limited definition.
The term has a long history, dating back to the 1920s and the discipline of Art History.
Also has a longer history in German philosophy.
German art critic- Franz Roh (1890-1965)- coined term ‘Magic Realism’- in terms of
post-expressionistic painting. About how we perceive objects- a ‘new objectivity’ >
signalled a new direction in painting- seeing world with new eyes.
Also important in literary innovation.
MR is engaged with philosophical questions of how we see the world.
o Its about alternative realities- seeing the world in new and exciting ways.
o How might we challenge ways of seeing the world?
Endowing everyday objects with a new significance.
MR is concerned with the magical qualities of living.
Note: the importance of the aftermath of WW1
Note: the influence of Roh’s work on Latin American writers.
Cuban Novelist- Alejo Carpentier- coined a new term- ‘The Marvelous Real’.
o MarvReal as representing a uniquely American form of MR.
o The marvellous is ‘lurking’ in realities of American time and place- magic is
inherent in the culture.
o Reality is already magical for Carpentier.
*** SO two definitions- related to specific cultural and geographical locations ***
SO MR- according to Angel Flores-combines elements of both traditions- and is an
‘amalgamation of realism and fantasy’.
BUT for Roe- the ‘magic’ lies in the style, and the ‘realism’ in the content and for
Flores- the ‘magic’ is in the content and the ‘realism’ is in the style.
o i.e. relaying of magical events as if they were commonplace.
o i.e. ‘realist’ depictions of ‘magical’ objects.
Bowers- science and rational thought are not adequate ways of describing the world
>> need a ‘Magical Realism’.
o MR questions the dominant ways of understanding the world > opening up
new possibilities.
o MR is a genre challenging realisms claim to truth.
o MR about exploring diverse realities.
Locations and Dislocations
MR is a type of Realism- remember this.
o Terry Eagleton- emphasises the importance of literary realism.
The realist novel represents one of the great revolutionary cultural forms of human history. In
the domain of culture, it has something like the importance of steam-power or electricity in the
material realm or of democracy in the political sphere. For art to depict the world in its
everyday, unregenerate state is now so familiar that it is impossible to recapture its shattering
originality when it first emerged.
-Terry Eagleton, The English Novel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), p. 19.
MR novel is a reworking/ reimagining of the realist novel.
J. A. Cuddon- realism is about the everyday, the commonplace:
On the whole one tends to think of realism in terms of the everyday, the normal, the
pragmatic. More crudely, it suggests a jackets off, sleeves rolled up, a ‘no nonsense’
approach … In general this enormous body of literature displays what H. Levin has described
as that ‘willed tendency of art to approximate reality’. However, one can suggest that some
literature is more realistic than other literature … ‘More realistic’ in the sense of more down to
earth, closer to everyday life, and thus well within the experience of the legendary man on the
Clapham bus, or Clapham Man.
J.A. Cuddon, The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th edn (London:
Penguin, 1999), p. 729.
, BUT Eagleton- says ‘Realism’ is just another literary convention- another mode of
representation, which pretends that it is not a literary convention.
It is dangerous, then, to talk about realism as representing ‘life as it really is’, or ‘the
experience of the common people’. Both notions are too controversial to be used so lightly.
Realism is a matter of representation; and you cannot compare representations with ‘reality’
to check how realistic they are, since what we mean by ‘reality’ itself involves questions of
representation. - Eagleton, The English Novel, p. 10.
The realist novel wants to construct a world that a reader can understand. It aspires
to verisimilitude. The characters of the realist novel, were novel for their mere
ordinariness.
o Realist novel- a totalizing enterprise- seeks to offer a seamless, universal,
complete narrative:
Formal realism […] is the narrative embodiment of […] the premise, or primary convention,
that the novel is a full and authentic report of human experience, and is therefore under an
obligation to satisfy its reader with such details of the story as the individuality of the actors
concerned, the particulars of the times and places of their actions, details which are
represented through a more largely referential use of language than is common in other
literary forms.
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (London: Pimlico,
2000; first published 1957), p. 32.
***MR is a blending of realist forms and pre-realist***
Literary Realism is limited because it precludes whatever is not considered to be
‘real’.
***MR is looking back at what LR precludes***:
Indeed, we may suppose that the widespread appeal of magical realist fiction today responds
not only to its innovative energy but also to its impulse to re-establish contact with traditions
temporarily eclipsed by the mimetic constraints of nineteenth- and twentieth-century realism.
Contemporary magical realist writers self-consciously depart from the conventions of magical
realism to enter and amplify other (diverted) currents of Western literature that flow from the
marvellous Greek pastoral and epic traditions to medieval dream visions to the romance and
Gothic fictions of the past century.
Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, ‘Introduction’, in Magical Realism: Theory,
History, Community, ed. Zamora and Faris (Durham: Duke UP, 1995), pp. 1-11 (p. 2).
‘El boom’ and the ‘new novel’
‘The Marvelous Real’ > Carpentier : the everyday environment is inherently magical in
terms of Latin American culture.
Landscape and geography are key ***
Language is important in Latin America- they speak ‘romance languages;.
LA has a long history: diverse population, ethnic and linguistic diversity, history of
colonial conquest etc.
o Colonialism: saw a merging of Europe and Latin America.
o LA as lurking on the margins of the European cultural imagination.
Because Latin America has a form of postcolonial relationship with Europe, and particularly in
relation to the colonial power of Spain from whence many of its inhabitants migrated, it has
had, until the mid-twentieth century, a relationship with Europe that placed it on the margins of
European perception, knowledge and culture. The shift away from a position of marginal
cultural production in which all things European were esteemed, coincided with the
development of magical realist fiction in Latin America.
-Maggie Ann, Magic(al) Realism (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 33.
Mid- twentieth century > ‘El boom’ in LA literature : started in the 1950s- influenced in
part by modernist European writers,
