Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community

Published by Duke University Press 1995

Magical Realism

Theory, History, Community

Edited by: Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822397212

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Lois Parkinson Zamora is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Houston.

Wendy B. Faris is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas, Arlington.

Reviews

"This critical collection combines astute and graceful interpretations of well-known literary texts from the Americas while at the same time displaying a rich global understanding of the broad reach of magical realism. Fashioning subtle rethinkings of the magical realist movement, it will shape discussion of postmodern and postcolonial literary histories."—José David Saldívar, University of California, Berkeley

"Zamora and Faris persuasively support their claim that magical realism is not only—or even mainly—a Latin American phenomenon, as is usually thought, but a truly international development of the last half century or so and, a major, perhaps the major, component of postmodernist fiction."—Matei Calinescu, Indiana University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	x
Introduction: Daiquiri Birds and Flaubertian Parrot(ie)s Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
I. Foundations
Magic Realism: Post-Expressionism (1925) Franz Roh Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
Magic Realism, New Objectivity, and the Arts during the Weimar Republic Irene Guenther Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
On the Marvelous Real in America (1949) Alejo Carpentier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
The Baroque and the Marvelous Real (1975) Alejo Carpentier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction (1955) Angel Flores Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	109
Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature (1967) Luis Leal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
The Territorialization of the Imaginary in Latin America: Self-Affirmation and Resistance to Metropolitan Paradigms Amaryll Chanady Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
Sources of Magic Realism/Supplements to Realism in Contemporary Latin American Literature Scott Simpkins Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
II. Theory
Scheherazade's Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction Wendy B. Faris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
Magic Realism and Postmodernism: Decentering Privileged Centers Theo L. D’Haen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
The Metamorphoses of Fictional Space: Magical Realism Rawdon Wilson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
The Textualization of the Reader in Magical Realist Fiction Jon Thiem Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Psychic Realism, Mythic Realism, Grotesque Realism: Variations on Magic Realism in Contemporary Literature in English Jeanne Delbaere-Garant Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
III. History
Magical Realism, Compensatory Vision, and Felt History: Classical Realism Transformed in The White Hotel John Burt Foster Jr. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Past-On Stories: History and the Magically Real, Morrison and Allende on Call P. Gabrielle Foreman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	285
Narrative Trickery and Performative Historiography: Fictional Representation of National Identity in Graham Swift, Peter Carey, and Mordecai Richler Richard Todd Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Saleem Fathered by Oskar: Midnight's Children, Magic Realism, and The Tin Drum Patricia Merivale Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	329
Magical Archetypes: Midlife Miracles in The Satanic Verses Steven F. Walker Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	347
Derek Walcott and Alejo Carpentier: Nature, History, and the Caribbean Writer David Mikics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	371
IV. Community
Magic Realism as Postcolonial Discourse Stephen Siemon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	407
Metoikoi and Magical Realism in the Maghrebian Narratives of Tahar ben Jelloun and Abdelkebir Khatibi John Erickson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	427
The Magic of Identity: Magic Realism in Modern Japanese Fiction Susan J. Napier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	451
Roads of "Exquisite Mysterious Muck": The Magical Journey through the City in William Kennedy's Ironweed, John Cheever's "The Enormous Radio," and Donald Barthelme's "City Life" Melissa Stewart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	477
Magical Romance/Magical Realism: Ghosts in U.S. and Latin American Fiction Lois Parkinson Zamora Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	497
Selected Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	551
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	559
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	563

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 592
Illustrations
- Other: 11 illustrations

eBook

Published: November 14, 1995
ISBN: 9780822397212