magical realism

Literature

2022

We explain what magical realism in literature is, its origin and characteristics. In addition, its main authors and works.

Magical realism uses strategies of realism to narrate the wonderful.

What is magical realism?

Magical realism is a literary movement emerged in Latin America in the middle of the 20th century (between the 60s and 70s). In his works the fantastic, the unreal and the strange were represented in the most common and everyday way possible.

Along with epic realism, with which it presents some similarities, magical realism aspired to give verisimilitude to the unreal, maintaining the daily life of the fantastic as a position before life, very different from what the vanguards, fundamentally nihilists.

Many critical approaches to magical realism have interpreted it as a typical product of the literatures postcolonial, that is, of peoples who experienced domination by nations more powerful and then emancipated. Seen this way, magical realism attempts to reconcile the reality of the colonizers and the reality of the colonized in a mixed, hybrid story.

Magical realism was an extremely popular narrative style, led by authors such as Gabriel García Márquez, who may be its greatest exponent with his novel One hundred years of loneliness . It became a literary movement easily associated with the entire continent, against which later generations of storytellers were to rebel.

Origin of magical realism

The term "magical realism" was coined for letters in 1948 by the Venezuelan intellectual Arturo Úslar Pietri (1906-2001) in his rehearsal "Letters and men of Venezuela." However, it had already been used at the beginning of the century to describe a certain pictorial style that showed an altered reality, in the book Magical realism from the critic of art German Franz Roh.

On the other hand, the term "magical realism" was born simultaneously with the "marvelous real" proposed by the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980). In fact, Carpentier's novel The kingdom of this world marked the beginning of this movement.

Magical realism was widely cultivated in Latin America and became, with the success of many of its representatives both in America like in Europe, in a representative movement of the culture Latin America and its tensions between popular, traditional and superstition-based sensibilities, and the technological, industrial and modern world.

Characteristics of magic realism

In general, magical realism is characterized by:

  • Stories told with the strategies of realism, but addressing fantastic, unreal or wonderful anecdotes.
  • The fantastic and unreal in the story is handled with full daily life, without surprising anyone, or providing explanations.
  • His stories prefer poor settings, rural or marginal.
  • Sensory descriptions of reality are mostly used.
  • Temporal plane breaks abound, when not the weather static, acronological or inverted.

Authors of magical realism

Some of the main authors of magical realism are:

  • Alejo Carpentier (Cuba). One of the great authors of Cuban and Latin American literature, considered a fundamental writer of the Spanish language for his abundant baroque narrative, which revolved around the concept of the "real marvelous." He was also a journalist and musicologist.
  • Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay). Short story writer and playwright considered one of the Latin American referents of the story modern, he is often compared to Edgar Allan Poe for his gloomy, vivid prose stories, often set in the jungle or in rural areas. His life was marked by tragedy, and at 58 years of age he committed suicide by drinking a glass of cyanide.
  • Miguel Ángel Asturias (Guatemala). Guatemalan writer, journalist and diplomat, mandatory reference in Latin American letters and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1967. His work drew the attention of the West on the indigenous cultures, especially from her country, and was close to surreal movement French, since Asturias lived a good part of his life abroad.
  • Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia). Colombian journalist and writer known as “el gabo”, he is perhaps the most recognized exponent of magical realism and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. His work has been translated into many languages ​​and his leftist militancy is almost as well-known as his narrow friendship with Fidel Castro.
  • Isabel Allende (Chile). Chilean writer born in Peru and living in the United States, she is probably the most widely read living writer in the Spanish-speaking world, with a work translated into 42 languages. She is the niece of the late Chilean President Salvador Allende.
  • Juan Rulfo (Mexico). Perhaps the greatest Mexican short story writer of all time, Rulfo published just two books in his lifetime: a collection of short stories and a novel. However, his work is central to the tradition Latin America, and is part of both magical realism and the so-called Latin American “boom”.

Works of magical realism

The novel "The House of Spirits" was so popular that it was made into a movie.

Some of the best known literary works that are part of magical realism are:

  • One hundred years of loneliness by Gabriel García Márquez
  • Kingdom of this world by Alejo Carpentier
  • Bomarzo by Manuel Mujica Lainez
  • Aura by Carlos Fuentes
  • The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
  • Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo
  • Doña Flor and her two husbands by Jorge Amado
  • Hagiography of Narcissa the Beauty by Mireya Robles
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