Magic realism - English



Magic realism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Magic realism (or magical realism) is an artistic genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting. As used today the term is broadly descriptive rather than critically rigorous. The term was initially used by German art critic Franz Roh to describe painting which demonstrated an altered reality, but was later used by Venezuelan Arturo Uslar-Pietri to describe the work of certain Latin American writers. The Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (a friend of Uslar-Pietri) used the term "lo real maravilloso" (roughly "marvelous reality") in the prologue to his novel The Kingdom of this World (1949). Carpentier's conception was of a kind of heightened reality in which elements of the miraculous could appear while seeming natural and unforced. Carpentier's work was a key influence on the writers of the Latin American "boom" that emerged in the 1960s.

Elements of magical realism

The following elements are found in many magical realist works.

• Contents of fantastical elements.

• The fantastic elements may be intrinsically plausible but are never explained.

• Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element.

• Exhibits a richness of sensory details.

• Uses symbols and imagery extensively.

• Emotions and human sexuality as a social construct are often developed in great detail.

• Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent. Another technique is to collapse time in order to create a setting in which the present repeats or resembles the past.

• Inverts cause and effect, for instance a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs.

• Incorporates legend or folklore.

• Presents events from multiple standpoints - ie. alternates detached with involved narrative voice; likewise, often shifts between characters' viewpoints and internal narration on shared relationships or memories.

• Mirrors past against present; astral against physical planes; or characters one against another.

• Open-ended conclusion leaves the reader to determine whether the magical and/or the mundane rendering of the plot is more truthful or in accord with the world as it is.

• Owns differing properties of magic and realism at the same time, while incorporating the two together often seamlessly.

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