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Magic Realism (or Magical Realism) is an illustrative or literary technique in which the laws of cause and effect seem not quite to apply in otherwise real world situations. The term magic realism was first used by the German art critic Frank Roh to describe the unusual realism of primarily American painters such as Ivan Albright, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker and other artists during the 1920s, under whom traditional realism became subtly infused with overtones of the surreal and fantastical. The term grew popular in the 20th century with the rise of such authors as Mikhail Bulgakov, Ernst Jünger, and many Latin American writers, most notably Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, and Isabel Allende. Today, magical realism is used especially when referring to Latin American literature; it was first applied to such literature by the critic Arturo Uslar-Pietri, but only came in vogue after Nobel prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias defined his novels as fitting into the style.
It is difficult to distinguish magic realism from conventional fictional realism. After all, the very plots, characters, and narrator of conventional fiction are not truly realistic. However, stories of magic realism tend to treat reality as completely fluid and have characters who accept this as normal. An encyclopedia reshapes the world to fit its descriptions or a stream of blood travels to tell a woman of the death of her son, and the characters simply accept these unprecedented happenings as mere events in their lives.
Though magic realism has spread beyond these confines, it is worth noting that it often appears in societies with repressive, authoritarian or totalitarian governments and in post-colonial contexts. Thus, critics believe it may represent an accommodation to a severely dangerous form of political reality.
Although what exactly distinguishes a magical realist novel from a merely fantastical novel is a problem that critics haven't sorted out yet, there are a few characteristic differences that most readers agree on. Fantasy and science fiction novels portray an alternate world with its own set of rules and characteristics or experiment with our world by suggesting how a new technology or political system might affect our society. Magical realism, however, portrays a reality that someone believes in, once believed in, or could believe in. Magical realist works are often based on folklore, recreating the world as people in the past saw it. Through this, magical realists juxtapose two versions of reality on one setting or event. For instance, in his work The Kingdom of this World, Alejo Carpentier describes the execution of a slave leader. Carpentier reveals both the persepective of the white men that the leader is burned and the slaves' perception, based on their own folklore, that he has escaped to return again when they need aid. Allowing for multiple views of reality in one text, one mundane and one marvelous, is a postmodern technique that challenges the universality of the dominant worldview.
Magical Realist Authors
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