Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community
Magical realism is often regarded as a regional trend, restricted to the Latin American writers who popularized it as a literary form. In this critical anthology, the first of its kind, editors Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris show magical realism to be an international movement with a wide-ranging history and a significant influence among the literatures of the world. In essays on texts by writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Günter Grass, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, Abe Kobo,...
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Magical realism is often regarded as a regional trend, restricted to the Latin American writers who popularized it as a literary form. In this critical anthology, the first of its kind, editors Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris show magical realism to be an international movement with a wide-ranging history and a significant influence among the literatures of the world. In essays on texts by writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Günter Grass, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, Abe Kobo, Gabriel García Márquez, and many others, magical realism is examined as a worldwide phenomenon.Presenting the first English translation of Franz Roh’s 1925 essay in which the term magical realism was coined, as well as Alejo Carpentier’s classic 1949 essay that introduced the concept of lo real maravilloso to the Americas, this anthology begins by tracing the foundations of magical realism from its origins in the art world to its current literary contexts. It offers a broad range of critical perspectives and theoretical approaches to this movement, as well as intensive analyses of various cultural traditions and individual texts from Eastern Europe, Asia, North America, Africa, the Caribbean, and Australia, in addition to those from Latin America. In situating magical realism within the expanse of literary and cultural history, this collection describes a mode of writing that has been a catalyst in the development of new regional literatures and a revitalizing force for more established narrative traditions—writing particularly alive in postcolonial contexts and a major component of postmodernist fiction.
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Daiquiri Birds and Flaubertian Parrot(ie)s1Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism (1925)15Magic Realism, New Objectivity, and the Arts during the Weimar Republic33On the Marvelous Real in America (1949)75The Baroque and the Marvelous Real (1975)89Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction (1955)109Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature (1967)119The Territorialization of the Imaginary in Latin America: Self-Affirmation and Resistance to Metropolitan Paradigms125Sources of Magic Realism/Supplements to Realism in Contemporary Latin American Literature145Scheherazade's Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction163Magic Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers191The Metamorphoses of Fictional Space: Magical Realism209The Textualization of the Reader in Magical Realist Fiction235Psychic Realism, Mythic Realism, Grotesque Realism: Variations on Magic Realism in Contemporary Literature in English249Magical Realism, Compensatory Vision, and Felt History: Classical Realism Transformed in The White Hotel267Past-On Stories: History and the Magically Real, Morrison and Allende on Call285Narrative Trickery and Performative Historiography: Fictional Representation of National Identity in Graham Swift, Peter Carey, and Mordecai Richler305Saleem Fathered by Oskar: Midnight's Children, Magic Realism, and The Tin Drum329Magical Archetypes: Midlife Miracles in The Satanic Verses347Derek Walcott and Alejo Carpentier: Nature, History, and the Caribbean Writer371Magic Realism as Postcolonial Discourse407Metoikoi and Magical Realism in the Maghrebian Narratives of Tahar ben Jelloun and Abdelkebir Khatibi427The Magic of Identity: Magic Realism in Modern Japanese Fiction451Roads of "Exquisite Mysterious Muck": The Magical Journey through the City of William Kennedy's Ironweed, John Cheever's "The Enormous Radio," and Donald Barthelme's "City Life"477Magical Romance/Magical Realism: Ghost in U.S. and Latin American Fiction497Selected Bibliography551Contributors559Index563
