Magic(Al) Realism

Magic(al) Realism

Ø Term coined by Franz Roh in 1925, relating to German painting

Ø Came to be associated with certain kinds of fiction, and by the 1980s as a “label” by literary critics

Has been applied to such authors as:

Ø Luis Borges (1899-1988), the Argentinean who in 1935 published Historia universal de la infamia, a collection of short stories, and regarded by many as the first work of magic realism.

Ø Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928- ), Columbian author of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).

Ø Salmon Rushie (1947- ), Indian-British author of Midnight’s Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize in that year.

Characteristic features might include:

· the mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the fantastic or bizarre;

· the horrific and unexplicable;

· skilful time shifts;

· convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots;

· miscellaneous use of dreams;

· myths and fairy stories;

· arcane erudition;

· expressionistic and even surrealistic description;

· the element of surprise or abrupt shock.

Source: The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Ed. J.A. Cuddon. Penguin Books: London, 1992.