In the 1940s Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier coined the term Magic Realism to described the interweaving of the fantastical and the realistic prevalent in Latin American fiction. The genre incorporates indigenous mythologies with the political realities of the continent. Some of the famous authors that wrote works of Magic Realism are Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges and Isabelle Allende.
It is a rejections of the dominant western school of thought of the 19th century, positivism which held any truth must be rationally or scientifically justified. Magic Realism offers a different way to view the world, returning to folklore and mysticism as a medium through which the we can understand the world.
The literary mode of Magic Realism is the relationship between opposites, most commonly: a state of wakefulness and sleep, the natural and the supernatural, the urban and the rural, the beautiful and the grotesque, the objective and the subjective, passion and reason and the western and indigenous.
The genre incorporates irony, the magic in Magic Realism is taken for granted. Most narratives are set in a contemporary world we would recognize but dreamlike occurrences are intertwined with the mundane. The characters within the novels do not react to the absurdly magical as though it is out of the ordinary, the reader alone is left to marvel. The narrator often has no clear opinion and explains the natural with the same importance as the supernatural.
Some scholars argue that Magic Realism springs out of the postcolonial experience, which is fraught with the task of making sense of two different realities, that of the colonial powers and that of the colonized. Many Latin American works within the genre aim to restore certain cultural dimensions that have been lost. They abandon history as its been told, instead they represent historical conflict.
There are many cultural layers present that lend themselves to an exploration of the multifaceted cultural identities of the region, one of the main themes is hybridity between the dichotomies. Some offer long genealogies like Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years Of Solitude which follows the multi-generational Buendía family.
One Hundred Years Of Solitude exemplifies the themes that weave works of Magic Realism together. It was first published in 1967 and is acclaimed to be one of the most significant works of the Spanish literary canon. The story is set in the small fictional village of Macondo in Colombia and re-tells historical events through incorporating national folklore. The novel recounts political strife such as the Thousand Days’ War(1899–1902), an armed conflict between the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party and factions, and the cruel dominance of corporations such as the United Fruit Company.
Though the genre is a popular mode of writing in Latin America, works of Magic Realism can be found world wide and across different time periods and has no real defined source. 19th century Russian writer Nikolai Gogl is famous for stories that involve the normalization of the supernatural and social critique. His short story The Nose tells of a man’s nose walking around St. Petersburg and raising above the social standing of its owner. The story puts a critical lens on the peoples’ preoccupation with social ranking.
Over all, Magic Realism takes on many different forms across the world and across different time periods, its expression in Latin American is gripping and can re-tell history in rich ways. It is both fantastical but can be frightfully faithful to real events. Often times the genre enables us to see the world more accurately through the lens of the magical.
