Magical Realism in Film and Literature

Flashcards covering the definitions, historical origins, key figures, and the five tenets of Magical Realism based on the lecture notes.

Magical Realism

A literary and cinematic style that presents a highly realistic view of the contemporary world while seamlessly embedding magical elements, effectively blurring the lines between fantasy and reality.

Gabriel García Márquez

The author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Vivir para Contarla ($2002$), who famously stated that life is how one remembers it to tell the tale.

The Goal of Magical Realism

To use imagination to enrich and interrogate reality, rather than using it to escape from reality.

Franz Roh

The German art critic who first used the term "Magical Realism" in $1925$ to describe painting styles that rejected abstract art while complicating pure realism.

René Magritte's The Son of Man

A painting used as an example of arranging real-life objects in a way that heightens them to mystery and fantasy.

José Ortega y Gasset

The philosopher who translated Franz Roh's writings into Spanish, facilitating the movement's transition to Latin American writers.

Franz Kafka

Author of The Metamorphosis ($1910s$–$1920s$), which uses a surreal event—a salesman turning into a giant bug—to comment on mundane daily life.

The Boom Period

The $1960s$ era when Gabriel García Márquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude, bringing magical realism to international literary prominence.

Alejo Carpentier

A pioneer of the movement who argued that the history of America is a chronicle of "the marvellous real" due to its mixed history and wealth of mythologies.

Tenet 1: An "Irreducible" Magic

The existence of a supernatural event or creature that cannot be explained by natural law, science, or logic, and is treated as a physical fact by the text.

Tenet 2: The Phenomenal Realist Description

A focus on everyday phenomena that are "refelt" by the marvelous; the extraordinary is bound by ordinary physical laws (e.g., a monster that bleeds and whimpers like a stray animal).

Tenet 4: Merging of Realms

A characteristic where the world of local mythology and the world of ordinary human life collide, such as a mythical beast sitting in a modern bedroom.

Tenet 5: Distorted Identity

The breakdown of the traditional boundary separating "human civilized space" from "wild mythic space."

Salman Rushdie's Operational Rule

The principle that for magical realism to work, the magic must be rooted in the real, creating surrealism that arises out of reality.

Authorial Reticence

Also known as "the brick face," this refers to the narrative's refusal to express surprise at magical events, treating them as normal occurrences.