Can some say is magical realism worth of reading?
Can some say is magical realism worth of reading?
Go ahead and read some and find out. What do you have to lose?Originally Posted by eerik
What is magical realism.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
It is a somewhat ill defined genre, because it appeared in different times/cultures and each have shaped it.
Some of the more recognizable authors are:
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Isabel Allende
Salman Rushdie
Murakami
In its simplest form, Magic Realism brings the fantastical or supernatural into the mundane. The fantastical/supernatural is accepted as part of reality - not questioned as in some fantasies or Romances.
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
A related label, though it doesn't completely overlap, is "urban fantasy".
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Salman Rushdie said that people dismiss the genre after only reading the word Magic, and forget the Realism part.
Two books that I personally found interesting were, The Satanic Verses and The Master and Margarita.
Definitely.
You forgot Faulkner in there.
I don't know that I consider Faulkner Magic Realism. Again, we're dealing with ill-defined genres, but I place the Gothic (which Faulkner is) separate from Magic Realism.
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
That is different to what I thought it would be. I thought it might be like something I read in one of Bernard Cornwell's Arthurian books. Any of Morgan Le Fay's spells could have been attributed to luck, freak weather or natural causes, but taken together the coincidences were remarkable.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
I think The Master and Margarita is wonderful but it seems quite wrong to classify it as magical realism. One reason is because of the overriding satirical intent which in itself justifies the supernatural without reference to magic. Another is that all of the magic in this case is of the traditional religious kind: Satan and Jesus and witchcraft and so on. And the recounting of the passion of Christ from a new perspective sort of puts it in the realm of parable. Does that make sense?
Magical realism is not really a genre or a moviment, so it can be anything without really being anything.
I don't agree with this. Magic Realism is a movement, just as much as Romanticism is. Like Romanticism, Magic Realism has its beginnings in visual art - particularly Franz Roh. From there, it developed in Germany and Italy, and eventually spread - becoming very popular in Latin America.
As far as it being a genre: a think any subgroup of literature that can be categorized based on common elements can constitute a genre.
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote