Search SFE    Search EoF

  Omit cross-reference entries  

Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997)
Magic Realism

Tagged: Theme.

Term first used in 1920s Germany to describe some contemporary painters, and at first not easily distinguishable from Surrealism, though distinctions did emerge. In Surrealism, there is no real concern for a default region or rhetoric which may be described as "real", no framing Reality; surreal paintings and texts may be deemed Fantastic but are rarely Fantasy. In Magic Realism, by contrast, the regions of the real may be irradiated with dream imagery, dislocations in time and space, haunting juxtapositions, etc., but reality is the frame within which the narration, whether visual or textual, proceeds. The more extreme examples of Magic Realism are often fantastic; but many Magic Realism texts – in particular Myth of Origin tales by the Latin American writers with whom the term is now generally identified – can be treated as fantasy.

By the early 1980s, Magic Realism had become a term mostly applied to writers like Jorge Luis Borges, whose Universal History of Infamy (coll 1935) subjects its various subjects to manipulations that make the fictional seem true, the historical seem imagined: but always within an ultimate frame that acknowledges the ongoing world. In the hands of Borges and those who followed him, Magic Realism is a technique of interpretation, and in fictions is almost invariably tied to Story. Magic Realism is a way of telling the story of reality, and its deep popularity in Latin America reflects the fact that old European modes had failed to capture the complex, interwoven, fabulous history of that vast region – Magic Realism is, in short, a way of approaching the Matter of Latin America. English-language writers who have been described as magic realists include Brian Aldiss, James P Blaylock, Peter Carey, Angela Carter, E L Doctorow, John Fowles, Mark Helprin, Salman Rushdie and Emma Tennant. [JC]

links



x
This website uses cookies.  More information here. Accept Cookies