Worldwide Impact Of Magical Realism English Literature Essay

Worldwide Impact Of Magical Realism English Literature EssayImagine a conception where flowers rain from the sky and people can transform into animals at willing, a place in which time flows unpredictably and the dotty seemsunremarkable to observers. This is the chimeric, phantasmagorial realm of the charming realist genre of publications. Magical realism, as seen in the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a reflection of the Latin American postcolonial culture and has greatly influenced populace belles-lettres for the last century, patronage a complicated history and chronic nominal confusion. The history of charming realism is complex and multinational. To understand it, one must understand the history of the termination itself. The phrase magic realism was coined by Franz Roh, a German art critic, in his 1925 book Post-Expressionism, Magic Realism Problems of the MostRecent European scene (Bowers 9) to describe the post-expressionist art of certain contemporary German pain ters (Bowers 9-10). This original magical realist movement featured a detailed, clear depiction (Bowers 9 Zamora 24) of, in Rohs words, the strange, the uncanny, the eerieaspects of insouciant reality (Baker). In 1949, a second, similar term, fantastic realism, first appeared in Cuban author Alejo Carpentiers seminal essay On the Marvelous Real in America, describing the extraordinary idiosyncrasies that make up the everyday reality of Latin American life (Bowers 14-16 Feinstein). Finally, the more familiar term magical realism was first utilise by Angel Flores in his 1955 essay, Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction, in which Flores contends that the genre has its roots in the romantic realism of Spanish-language literature (Bowers 17-18).Soon after this essay was published, the 1960s saw the beginning of a decades-long flowering of Latin American literature and of magical realism. During this Latin American Boom, an uphill continent-wide desire to develop a distinctly Lat in American culture catalyzed a creative explosion led by Garcia Marquez of Colombia, Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, Jose Donoso of Chile, and Julio Cortazar of Argentina that better the genre (Bowers 17-18 Feinstein). Neither magical realisms authors nor its origins are confined to Latin America, however. It was largely influenced by the Romantic and Surrealist movements in Europe, and Copernican precursors include quasi-surrealist German writer Franz Kafka, sixteenth-century Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, and Italian surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico (Bowers 18). Among the first genuine magical realists was German author Gunter Grass, author of The Tin Drum (Bowers 19). Modern magical realists get from such nations as the United States, India, Japan, Canada, Nigeria, and Italy, including noted authors Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie (Bowers 18 Cowan 4). Perhaps because of this complicated history, there is a general consensus that there is no ge neral consensus on how to scarcely define magical realism (Baker). This can be attributed in part to confusion over the precise meanings of and distinctions between the terms magic realism, magical realism, and marvelous realism (Bowers 2). However, the styles features are less nebulous and readily identifiable. According to Flores, the essence of magical realist fiction is that, time exists in a kind of fluidity and the bootless happens as part of reality. Wendy B. Faris gives an irreducible element of magic as its most important criterion (Faris, The Question 102), in addition to a strong comportment of the world we know (Faris, Ordinary Enchantments 7). This corresponds to the realism portion of magical realisms name.In general, the supernatural coexists with the mundane, and neither character nor narrator express any feeling that such fantastic occurrences are out of place (Baker). This all creates what Adam Feinstein eloquently calls a rich, often disturbing world that is bo th familiar and dreamlike(Feinstein 15). Briefly, magical realist fiction presents magical events in a realistic manner.Magical realism can best be understood through typesetters cases from its authors. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian author of the novels, One Hundred historic period of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature, has come to typify the genre, and even all of modern Latin American literature (Bowers 3). Fuentes calls magical realism the personal stamp of only one Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Faris, The Question 108), and Michael Wood refers to him as the undisputed master of the magical realist voice that tells of fantasies in expressionless prose (Wood 10). Garcia Marquezs work is full of examples of magical realism. For instance, in his short story, Light is Like Water, the light from a common house fixture acts in such a way that children can sail boats on it (Faris, The Question 114), and household objects fly with their own wings through the kitchen sky (Faris, Ordinary Enchantments 12). But all subsequentexamples will be taken from what is arguably his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the story of the Buendia family. The erraticism and ambiguity of time can be seen in the example of Pilar Ternera, who, upon turning 145,gives up the pernicious custom of keeping track of her age and goes on living in the static and marginal time of memories, in a future perfectly revealed and established, beyond the futures, disturbed by the insidious snares and suppositions of her cards. (Garca Marquez 394)Similarly, a rain shower lasts for nearly five eld insomnia can erase the past a room exists where it is always a Monday in the month of March (Faris, Ordinary Enchantments 23) and, after he dies, Melquades Buenda begins to history the history of the town of Macondo, both recording and predicting the towns events (Faris, Ordinary Encantments 10). In another example of magical realism , yellow butterflies, relentlessly swarming and invasive, accompany MauricioBabilonia to his trysts with Meme Buenda (Garca Marquez 285-287) despite being magical, they are vulnerable to an insecticide bomb, demonstrating the realist component (Faris, Ordinary Enchantments 18-19). And, during the funeral of Jose Arcadio Buenda, tiny yellow flowers rain from the sky, carpeting the streets (Garca Marquez 144). The rattling(a) elements of magical realism can be explained in part by the cultural situation that existed at the time of the genres nascence. Magical realisms duality might be considered to be a residue from the colonial occupation of the Latin American continent. The European conquerors imposed their own culture on that of the conquered, resulting in thecoexistence of two opposed world views-European rationalism and ancient native spiritualism (Baker). In the words of Stephen Slemon, the two oppositional organisations each work toward the creation of a different kind of f ictional world from the other (Faris, The Question 102). Magical realism can also be seen as a form of resistance to colonial ideologies, a discursive system that challenges the restrictions of a circumscribed colonial space (Baker). It honors native custom by frequently giving voice to indigenous myths, legends, and cultural practices and simultaneously serves a decolonizing role, one in which new voices have emerged, an alternative to European realism (Faris, The Question 103). The fact that magical realist authors often hail from transitional, third-world countries supports this hypothesis (Cowan 6). But now the magical realist tradition appears to be dying. Magical realism has been victimized by modernization and unification in Latin America, and the need to develop a distinctLatin American writing style no longer persists (Feinstein). Only a few writers like Isabel Allende still practice it (Cowan 6 Feinstein). Also, recent magical realist work is a testament to the change in the landscape of the continent, infused with urban elements and modern issues. (Feinstein). And, unfortunately, the magic is increasingly being used as an instrument of lazy deus ex machina kind of of an element in an alternate world, resolving plot conflicts rather than creating them (Khair). Thus, the future of magical realism looks dim. Even if the magical realist movement has lost its elan vital, it has been an important player in the history of twentieth-century literature, spearheaded by fountainheads of creativity likeGabriel Garca Marquez. Although the remnants of European hegemony led to it being most prominent in Latin America, over the course of its rich history, magical realism has left a permanent impact on worldwide literature.