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An Introduction to Magical Realism

We recognize the world, although now--not only because we have emerged from a dream--we look on it with new eyes. --Alberto Rios. An Introduction to Magical Realism. What is Magical Realism?. First coined by German art critic Used to explain art looking at reality in a new way

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An Introduction to Magical Realism

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  1. We recognize the world, although now--not only because we have emerged from a dream--we look on it with new eyes. --Alberto Rios An Introduction to Magical Realism

  2. What is Magical Realism? • First coined by German art critic • Used to explain art looking at reality in a new way • Later applied to literature

  3. Elements of Magical Realism Two conflicting perspectives: -one based on a rational view of reality -the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as reality In other words…elements of dreams, fairy tales, or mythology combine with the everyday.

  4. Example: Franza Kafka’s The Metamorphasis “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

  5. The story is set in an otherwise ordinary world, with familiar historical and/or cultural realities.

  6. Transformation of the common and the everyday into the awesome and the unreal. Example: “An Act of Vengeance” -- Isabel Allende Dulce’s hatred grows for thirty years, until her obsession becomes love for Don Tadeo.

  7. Example: One Hundred Years of Solitude– Gabriel Garcia Marquez • woman who is so beautiful that she is followed everywhere by a cloud of butterflies • all of the butterflies have tattered wings. • the miraculous, looked at closely, is mundane

  8. Magic occurs without using devices typical to the fantasy genre unless the devices (i.e. ghosts, angels) are employed in a context that makes them ordinary. Ghosts or angels may exist in a magical realist story, for instance, but not in a way that is surprising or unusual to the characters in the book.

  9. an old man with enormous wings appears in a Colombian village Example: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  10. Constructs of time do not follow typical Western conventions. For instance, stories may be told in spiraling shapes rather than in straight lines.

  11. Contradictions, inconsistencies and ambiguities color the point of view, making the reader question what he or she understands about the world at large, as well as what happens inside the story. WHAT IS REAL…AND WHAT IS MAGIC?

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