Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community

"Mind and body, spirit and matter, life and death, real and imaginary, self and other, male and female: these are boundaries to be erased, transgressed, blurred, brought together, or otherwise fundamentally refashioned in magical realist texts."This is your bible on magical realism and a book I heartily recommend if you are interested in the way magical realism functions. This book includes essays from 24 different thinkers writing on the topic. As the title suggests, the many writers cover the theories, histories, and communities but there is also another vitally important component included which the editors refer to as "Foundations." The foundation of magical realism has to do with where the term comes from and how it evolves from Franz Roh's (German post-expressionist painter) first utterance of it in 1925 to the literary hotbed of Latin America. This foundation is crucial to understanding the term's complexity.

Dr. Zamora was my professor at the University of Houston and this text is wonderfully anthologized to bring the reader into the world of magical realism. The world of magical realism is not questioned or fabricated, but co-existing with us. The boundaries of what is real and what is not is blurred. Texts that question the plausibility of events is not magical realism, rather it is fantasy. For instance, Harry Potter series is magical and wonderful in its tales but the world is oblivious to their existence. No one questions or wonders how it is possible that there is an old man with enormous wings, but instead wonder what he is, an angel or a man (Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings". This book is seminal in the introduction and collection of essays covering magical realism and why it chooses this message of delivery.I am hooked on magical realism, or as Marquez terms it for himself "social realism", since it is fascinating that these postcolonial writers use magical realism to convey a history of blurred boundaries. I think many former colonized people will identify with the displacement they feel in being from neither here nor there, but from both here and there, a term known as hybridization.

Had to buy for a grad class. It's got some good stuff but overall a lot of filler.

Not the most thoroughly-researched literary genre, this collection of academia and theory is much-needed and highly-appreciated as an important contribution to discourse in the field.

This is a solid and well written book. It contains important articles for my thesis on scandinavian magical realismIvar LangsethKristiansand

This book is the best starting point for those who want to study magical realism. It covers the seminal texts that developed the theory and practice of magical realism, and also critical texts evaluating this aesthetic and literary category in relation to its origins, theory, history and communities.

A collection of interesting essays that I believe falls victim to the boredom of critical analysis. Too postmodern and not magical enough.