Book contents
- Magical Realism and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Magical Realism and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Chapter 1 Magic and Otherness
- Chapter 2 Primitivism, Ethnography and Magical Realism
- Chapter 3 Magical Realism and Indigeneity
- Chapter 4 Insubstantial Selves in Magical Realism in the Americas
- Chapter 5 Space, Time and Magical Realism
- Part II Development
- Part III Application
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - Insubstantial Selves in Magical Realism in the Americas
from Part I - Origins
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2020
- Magical Realism and Literature
- Cambridge Critical Concepts
- Magical Realism and Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Origins
- Chapter 1 Magic and Otherness
- Chapter 2 Primitivism, Ethnography and Magical Realism
- Chapter 3 Magical Realism and Indigeneity
- Chapter 4 Insubstantial Selves in Magical Realism in the Americas
- Chapter 5 Space, Time and Magical Realism
- Part II Development
- Part III Application
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The collective nature of character is a defining aspect of magical realism in the Americas and arguably the mode’s most notable departure from the conventions of literary realism. Magical realist authors aim to express communal realities, whether political, historical and/or cultural. To this end, they create 'insubstantial' characters who are not individualized or given complex interior lives. Rather, their identity is relational and based in collective structures, whether family, class, culture and/or ideology. Given magical realism’s greater investment in political and cultural selfhood, characters tend toward archetype and their lives toward allegory. The magical realist strategy of minimizing individuality in favor of collective experience allows authors to foreground politics over personality. As readers, we are asked to focus not on single selves, but on the political arc of entire continents and cultures. The authors discussed are García Márquez, Carpentier, Allende, Borges, Donoso and Erdrich.
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- Magical Realism and Literature , pp. 64 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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