Do you really believe in Do you really believe in magic?magic?

An introduction to An introduction to Magical RealismMagical Realism

Origins of Magical Realism• The term coined around 1924 by German art critic The term coined around 1924 by German art critic

Franz Roh Franz Roh

•Expressionism vs. Post-ExpressionismExpressionism vs. Post-Expressionism

Rehe im Walde

Franz Marc

What is Magical Realism?

A form of modern fiction in which fabulous and fantastic events are included in a narrative that

otherwise maintains the “reliable” tone of objective narration.

•Literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s• Julio Cortázar of Argentina, Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, and Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia.

•Cuban Revolution

•Gabriel García Márquez credited with bringing it "into vogue" after the publishing of One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1966

The Latin American Boom

Elements of Literary Magical Realism

1. Familial history and relationships

2. Life, death, and the afterlife

3. Multiple Realities

4. Symbolic names and characterization

5. Plot not linear but circular or intertwined

6. Parallel, double, co-existing plots and subplots 7. Dream, imagination, emotions and the spiritual

8. Specific historical, geographical and cultural context

9. Time and space—time-shifts between co-existing plots

10. Myths, legends, and oral traditions of storytelling

Elements of Artistic Magical Realism

• Painting style popular in Europe and the United States Painting style popular in Europe and the United States from the 1920s to 1940s. from the 1920s to 1940s.

• Between Surrealism and Photorealism but the use of Between Surrealism and Photorealism but the use of flat tones, ambiguous perspectives and strange flat tones, ambiguous perspectives and strange juxtapositions juxtapositions suggestsuggest an imagined or dreamed reality. an imagined or dreamed reality.

Michael Parkes

The Summit

Gargoyles

Otto Dix

Through a Glass Darkly

Entre les Trous de la Memoire

Dominique Appia

George Tooker

Subway

Andrew Wyeth

Christina’s World

Up in the Studio

Magical Realism: A Problem

Postcolonial Studies: anything which seems uncanny or unfamiliar to Western eyes becomes "magic", while to a native of that culture the events or ways of thinking so described are "real".

Angela Flores (1955) applied the term to Spanish-American writing

-Borges as master of the form and suggested Kafka as European equivalent

What is Surrealism?

A 20th-century artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is

characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.

De Chirico

The Disquieting Muses Song of Love

Max Ernst

The Elephant Celebes

Oedipus Rex

Film•Pan's Labyrinth •Big Fish •Amélie•An Autumn's Tale•The Science of Sleep

• El Norte• The Lake House• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada•Across the Universe•The Milagro Beanfield War•Apocalypse Now