Magical RealismLectures 1 and 2: IntroductionLectures 3 and 4: Axolotl by Julio CortazarLecture 5 : Student presentations on a topic related to MR

Midterm Exams

****************************************************************

Lectures 1-4: G.G. Marquez,One Hundred Years of SolitudeLecture 5 : Student presentations on One Hundred Years of Solitude or any other magical realist text

Final exams: Make-up exams

Magical realist works:G.G. Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (1982)T. Morrison Beloved (1987)Salman Rushdie, Midnights Children (1981) The Satanic Verses (1988)G.Grass, The Tin Drum (1959)Patrick Sskind, Perfume (1985)Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus (1984)Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate (1989)Ben Okri, The Famished Road (1991)

Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (1982) The story details the life of the Trueba family, spanning four generations, and tracing the post-colonial social and political upheavals of Chile.

Supernatural elements in The House of SpiritsClara del Valle, has paranormal powers -she predicts future events, she moves inanimate objects, she communicates with ghosts and spirits. Clara has a green-haired sister, Rosa the Beautiful.

Patrick Sskind, Perfume (1985) The story focuses on the life of a perfume apprentice in 18th-century France who, born with no body scent himself, begins to kill virgins in search of the "perfect scent", which he finds in a young woman named Laure.

The supernatural in The Tin Drum On his third birthday our little Oskar fell down the cellar stairs, no bones were broken, but he just wouldnt grow any more. And I began to drum. The ability to drum, the necessary distance between grownups and myself developed shortly after my fall, almost simultaneously with the emergence of a voice that enabled me to sing in so high-pitched vibrato, to sing-scream so piercingly that no one dared to take away the drum that was destroying his eardrums; for when the drum was taken away from me, I screamed, and when I screamed, valuable articles burst into bits: I had the gift of shattering glass with my singing: my screams demolished vases, my singing made windowpanes crumple and drafts prevail.

Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984) The novel focuses on the life Sophie Fevvers, a virgin hatched from an egg laid by unknown parents and ready to develop fully fledged wings.

Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991) The novel focuses on Azaro, an abiku (spirit child) living in an unnamed most likely Nigerian city.

The book exploits the belief in the coexistence of the spiritual and material worlds that is a defining aspect of traditional African life.

The novel employs a unique narrative style incorporating the spirit world with the "real" world. It has been classified by critics as example of magical realism, animist realism or fantacy literature.

Common feature: All of these works treat the supernatural as if it were a perfectly acceptable and understandable aspect of everyday life.

A basic definition of magical realism:

a mode of narration that naturalises or normalises the supernatural

PRECURSORS ofMAGICAL REALISMGogol The Nose Kafka Metamorphosis

The Nose: precursor of magical realism (an unreal element is woven into a realistic narrative)This story "contains much that is highly implausible." The Nose

Highly implausible element: the nose of Major Kovalyov leaves his face andacquires an independent life.

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled dream, he found himself changed in his bed to some monstrous kind of vermin.

Kafka Metamorphosis

HISTORY OF MAGICAL REALISM

3 stages in the development of MG

Franz Roh: Post-Expressionism, Magical Realism (1925) The term is used to define new, neo-realistic trends in German painting

lo real meravilloso: the term is used by Alejo Carpentier in the preface to Kingdom of this World (1949)

a 1955 lecture by Mexican writer Angel Flores: Flores notes that Latin American romantic literature is full of elements of realism, and realist works are full of elements of fantasy, and calls this mix magical realism.

Gonzales Echevarria

Franz Roh:Post-Expressionism, Magical Realism (1925)

Roh offered the term magical realismto describe (and celebrate) the post-expressionists return to realism after a decade or more of abstraction.

Expressionism Expressionists present the world from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. They try to express an emotional experience rather than physical reality. The Scream (1893) by E.Munch which inspired Expressionists

Franz Roh Expressionism

More abstract

An exaggerated preference for fantastic, extraterrestrial,remote objects. Post-Expressionism (1920s)

Return to realism

Celebration of the mundane(ordinary)

Post-expressionism / magical realism (in painting) A style of visual art that brings extreme realism to the depiction of mundane subject matter, revealing an "interior" mystery, rather than imposing external, overtly magical features onto this everyday reality. Alexander Kanoldt Still Life (1922)

HISTORY OF MAGICAL REALISM

3 stages in the development of MG

Franz Roh: The term is used to define new, neo-realistic trends in German painting

2. lo real maravilloso: the term is used by Alejo Carpentier in the preface to Kingdom of this World (1949)

Alejo Carpentier, Kingdom of this World Because of the virginity of the land, our upbringing, our ontology, the presence of the Indian and the black man, the revelation constituted by its recent discovery, its fecund racial mixing, America is far from using up its wealth of mythologies. After all, what is the entire history of America if not a chronicle of the marvellous real?

Because of the virginity of the land, our upbringing, our ontology, the presence of the Indian and the black man, the revelation constituted by its recent discovery, its fecund racial mixing, America is far from using up its wealth of mythologies. After all, what is the entire history of America if not a chronicle of the marvellous real?

Here (in Latin America) the strange is commonplace and always was commonplace.The stories of knighthood were written in Europe but they were acted out in America because even though the adventures of Amadis of Gaul were written in Europe, it is Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who in the True History of the Conquest of New Spain gives e us the first authentic chivalric romance. And constantly the conquerors saw very clearly aspects of the marvelous real in America. Here I want to recall Bernal Diazs phrase as he contemplates Tenochtitlan/Mexico City for the first time: We were all amazed and we said that these lands, temples and lakes were like enchantments in the books of Adonis. Here we have the European man in contact with the American marvelous real.

Carpentier, Baroque and the marvelous Real

Amadis of Gaul a 16th century landmark work among the knight-errantry tales (chivalric romances) which were parodied by Cervantes in Don Quixote.

Bernal Diazs response to Tenochtitlan/Mexico City:We were all amazed and we said that these lands, temples and lakes were like enchantments in the books of Adonis. Here we have the European man in contact with the American marvelous real.

1521: conquest of Mexico

Paris 13 km 2 (at the time of the conquest)Madrid 20 km2 (in 1889)Paris 80 km 2 (in 1889)

Tenochtitlan 100 km2 (in 1521)

Magical Realism relies on South American reality: the confluence of races and cultures of the whole world superimposed on the indigenous culture, in a violent climate.

Isabel Allende

Qtd. by Foreman in Zamora and Faris, MR, p. 286

Magical realism is born, the novel (One Hundred Years) suggests, in the gap between the belief systems of two very different groups of people.

(S. Hart , Wen-Chin Ouyang, Companion to MR, p.3)

HISTORY OF MAGICAL REALISM

3 stages in the development of MG

Franz Roh: Post-Expressionism, Magical Realism (1925) lo real meravilloso: Alejo Carpentier

a 1955 lecture by Mexican writer Angel Flores: Flores notes that Latin American romantic literature is full of elements of realism, and realist works are full of elements of fantasy, and calls this mix magical realism.

Flores points out the affinity of this magical realist style with the opening sentences of Kafkas The Metamorphosis: As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. Flores explains: The transformation of Gregor Samsa into a cockroach is not a matter of discussion: it happened and it was accepted by the other characters as an almost normal event. Similarly, magical realism, to Flores, is not weighed down by needlessly baroque descriptions but clings to reality as if to prevent literature from flying off, as in fairy tales, to supernatural realms.

Classification of Magical Realism (post-Boom period)

a phenomenological magical realism (stemming from Rohs ideas) an ontological magical realism (stemming from Carpentiers approach)

Gonzales Echevarria

Phenomenological MR (stemming from Rohs ideas): The magical/marvelous: not a quality of reality but a way of looking at reality (marvels stem from an observers vision)

The interaction of subjectivity and reality, mediated by the act of perception . . . generates the alchemy, the magic, but reality remains unaltered.

Ontological MR (stemming from Carpentiers approach):Magic: an inherent quality of realityMethod of grasping the magical aspects of reality: faith (Myth-based perceptions of reality rather than empirical rationality guarantee it.)

MAIN FEATURES OF MR1. Magic: an irreducible element 2. A strong presence of the phenomenal world;3. The reader may experience some unsettling doubts in the effort to reconcile two contradictory understandings of events;4. The narrative merges different realms; 5. MR disturbs received ideas about time,space, and identity. (Wendy B. Faris,Ordinary Enchantments: Remystification of Narrative, 2004: 7-43)

1. Magic: an irreducible element

* Irreducible element: something we cannot explain according to Western empirically based discourse

* The irreducible element is presented on the same narrative plane as other, commonplace, happenings:

(Ex.: Remedios the Beauty in Garca Mrquezs OHYS really ascends heavenward.)

* The irreducible element causes reversal of logic.

2. The phenomenal world

Realistic descriptions create a fictional world that resembles the one we live in, often by extensive use of detail.

3.Unsettling doubts

The reader may hesitate between two contradictory understandings of events, and hence experience some unsettling doubts.

3.Unsettling doubts

ExamplesYears before, when she had reached one hundred forty-five years of age, she had given up the pernicious custom of keeping track of her age and she went on living in the static and marginal time of memories, in a future perfectly revealed and established, beyond the futures disturbed by the insidious snares and suppositions of her cards.

They forgot her like a bad dream.Morrison, Beloved

3. Unsettling doubts Examples: G.G. Marquez starts the novel Of Love and Other Demons with a newspaper story he claims to have covered in 1949

The chief of excavations calmly explained to me that human hair grows one centimeter a month even after death, and twenty-two meters seemed to him a reasonable amount for two hundred years. To me, on the other hand, it didnt seem so trivial, for as a child my grandmother had told me the legend of a little twelve year old marquise whose hair dragged her along like a brides train, who had died of rabies from a dog bite, and who was worshipped in Caribbean villages for the miracles she performed.

4. The MR narrative merges different realmsAncient/ traditional/indigenousmodern worlds.Life deathFact - fiction

5.Disruptions of Time, Space, and Identity* Time: In IHYS it rains for four years, eleven months, and two days. * Space Cortzars axolotl and his observer seem to change places on either side of the glass .* Identity

Multiple and mobile identity Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after Ive gone which would not have happened if I had not come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each I, every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, youll have to swallow a world. (S.Rushdies character Saleem from Midnight Children)

MAIN FEATURES OF MR1. Magic: an irreducible element 2. a strong presence of the phenomenal world;3. the reader may experience some unsettling doubts in the effort to reconcile two contradictory understandings of events;4. the narrative merges different realms; 5. MR disturbs received ideas about time,space, and identity.

Other features of MRMetafiction: the text provides a commentary of itself.Authorial reticence Verbal magic: a closing of the gap between word and worldRepetition/replication(mirror image)MetamorphosisPolitical critique

Magical Realism and Neighbouring GenresRealismSurrealismFantasyScience Fiction

Magical Realism: an OxymoronRealism* history* mimetic * familiarization * empiricism/logic* narration* closure-ridden/ reductive naturalism * cause and effect Magical Realism* myth/legend* fantastic* defamiliarization * mysticism/magic* meta-narration* open-ended/expansive romanticism* imagination

Double faced nature of mimesis Function of art:

world-reflecting representation

holding a mirror to reality Function of art:

world-simuating/creating representaton

words are not mirrors

Halliwell, Stephen. The Aesthetics of Mimesis:Ancient Texts and Modern Problems.Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002

Different perceptions of reality

Logical (scientific) mentality/world view:

Characterised by a law of causality that seeks to identify and eliminate contradictions, and is conceptual, empirical and scientifically rational in nature.

Mythic/mystic mentality: A belief in forces which, though imperceptible to sense, are nevertheless real.

This belief implies that there is no distinction between natural and supernatural.

The primitives mentality does not recognise two distinct worlds in contact with one another and more or less penetrating. To him there is but one

Stanley Tambiah: Magic, Science, Religion andthe Scope of Rationality.

Surrealism - Magical Realism dream or a psychological experience tangible and material reality

Magic realism, unlike the fantastic and the surreal,presumes that the individual requires a bond with the traditions and the faith of the community, that s/he is historically constructed and connected.

Both the fantastic and the surreal require the total rejection of faith and tradition. Unlike magical realism, the fantastic and the uncanny posit an individual who experiences a world beyond the communitys parameters.

P.Gabrielle Foreman, Past-On stories Zamora and Faris (ed.) MR.p. 286

Magical Realism Fantasy (the fantastic) "In fantastic literaturein Borges for examplethe writer creates new worlds, perhaps new planets. By contrast, writers like Garcia Marquez, who use magical realism, don't create new worlds, but suggest the magical in our world."

L. Leal

Magical Realism Fantasy (the fantastic) In fantastic literature the supernatural invades a world ruled by reason. In magical realism the mystery does not descend to the represented world, but rather hides and palpitates behind it

Luis Leal

Magical Realism Fantasy (the fantastic) Shared features

1. Simultaneous presence of two conflicting codes2. Supernatural events (that cannot be integrated into a logical framework)3. Authorial reticence

Differences in the approach to the common elements: Approach to Supernatural Events

Fantacy

Supernatural eventsdemand special attention Magical Realism

The presence of supernatural events is normal.

Differences in the approach to the common elements:The simultaneous presence of two conflicting codes

Fantacy

Hieararchy betweenthe two codes.

Magical Realism

No hierarchy between the two codes.

Magical Realism- Science fiction

A science fiction novel provides a "...rational, physical explanation for any unusual occurrences." (such as Aldous Huxleys Brave New World)

"The science fiction narrative's distinct difference from magical realism is that it is set in a world different from any known reality and its realism resides in the fact that we can recognize it as a possibility for our future. Unlike magical realism, it does not have a realistic setting that is recognizable in relation to any past or present reality.

Bowers, Maggie A. Magic(al) Realism. New York: Routhledge, 29-30.

Magical Realism - Postcolonialism Magical realism: the literary language of the emergent postcolonial world.

Homi Bhabha

Magical Realism - PostcolonialismMR: writing back of the margins to the centreIt blurs the binaries of modern thoughtIt critiques the assumptions of the Enlightenment It shows the limitations of European rationalism It reveals the ethical failings of realism.

Warnes, MR and the Postcolonial Novel, 6

Magical Realism in non-Hispanic countries

Robert Kroetsch What the Crow Said (1978)Salman Rushdie Midnights Children (1980) D.M. Thomas The White Hotel (1981)Angela Carter The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1981)Toni Morrisons Beloved (1987)

Further Reading:Alejo Carpentier, On the Marvellous Real in America, in Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, ed. Wendy B. Faris and Lois Parkinson Zamora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 7588.

Roberto Gonzlez Echevarra, Myth and Archive. A Theory of Latin American Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

The Presence of Myth in Borges, Carpentier, Asturias, Rulfo and Garca Mrquez by Donald L. Shaw