Magical
Realism
What is Magical Realism?
Magical realism is a genre of narrative fiction and film that
blends the real and the magical in a totally believable
way. Used to describe literature that blends the real with
the supernatural, magical realism often shares
characteristics with other genres such as surrealism.
Key Vocabulary
Realism Surreal Indifferent Fantastical
showing people very strange; more not at all not being
or things in a way like a dream than interested in based in
that is accurate reality; mixed something reality;
or true to life
ideas and images imaginative
Key Vocabulary
Mundane Supernatural
common or ordinary not existing in nature or subject to
explanation according to natural laws;
not physical or material
Origin
One of the first writers to use
magical realism was Franz Kafka.
Kafka wrote a story called The
Metamorphosis about a man who
turns into an insect. The narrator
and the character believe this
change really happened. Kafka
blurred the real and the unreal in a
new way.
Key Writers & Artists
Isabel Allende - Chile Gabriel Garcia Marquez Guillermo del Toro -
- Colombia Mexico
The House of the Spirits (1982) 100 Years of Solitude (1970) Pan’s Labyrinth
Additional Examples
● Julio Cortázar (Argentina) - Rayuela
(Hopscotch) (1963)
● Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico
● American painter Philip Evergood
● For example, in García Márquez’s story “The
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” the
women in a fishing village fall in love with and
adopt a sailor whose dead body has washed
ashore.
● In a García Márquez story called “A Very Old
Man with Enormous Wings,” a character is very
different than the type of angel that is in myths
or stories.
● A character in Isabel Allende’s novel has green
hair and yellow eyes.
Characteristics
- Magical realist literature is influenced by folk and fairy tales and
mythology. These stories are characterized by complicated plots that
combine the mundane, the magical, and the political.
- These works feature realistic and mundane settings that serve as the
backdrop for magical or even surreal events and characters with
fantastical traits.
- The works have a realistic or indifferent tone. The narrators tell the story
in a straight-forward way. Magical events are described as if they are
ordinary and normal.
Characteristics (slide 2)
- Time is often not linear in works of magical realism. It may bend, skip
forward or backward, or stand still.
- Like surrealism, magical realism borrows from the world of dreams;
however, in magical realism, their purpose is to comment on the external
world, not to explore the author’s inner mind.
- Like fantasy, magical realism borrows supernatural events and fantastical
characters from myth, folklore, and fairy tales, but magical realism lacks
fantasy’s sense of wonder and impossibility, replacing it with a tone of
indifference.
Check for
Understanding
Use your notes to answer the
“Check for Understanding”
questions at the end.
