Entertainment / Literature / Magic Realism: In 1925, Franz Roh first applied the term 'magic realism' (magischer Realismus in German) to a group of neue Saqchlichkeit painters in Munich (Cuddon 531). These painters blended realistic, smoothly painted, sharply defined figures and objects--but in a surrealistic setting or backdrop, giving them an outlandish, odd, or even dream-like qualilty. In the 1940s and 1950s, the term migrated to the prose fiction of various writers including Jorge Luis Borges in Argentina, Gabriel Garcia M????rquez in Colombia, and Alejo Carpentier in Cuba. The influence also spread later to G????nter Grass in Germany and John Fowles in England (Abrams 135). These postmodern writers mingle and juxtapose realistic events with fantastic ones, or they experiment with shifts in time and setting, 'labyrinthine narratives and plots' and 'arcane erudition' (135), and often they combine myths and fairy stories with gritty Hemingway-esque detail. This mixture create truly dreamlike and bizarre effects in their prose. An example of magic realism (and one of my own personal favorites in postmodern narrative) would be Gabriel Garcia M????rquez's short story, 'A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,' a narrative in which a fisherman discovers a filthy, lice-ridden old man trapped face-down in the muddy shore of the beach, weighed down by enormous buzzard wings attached to his back. A neighbor identifies the old man as an angel who had come down to claim the fisherman's sick and feverish child but who had been knocked out the sky by storm winds during the previous night. Not having the heart to club the sickly angel to death, the protagonist decides instead to keep the supernatural being captive in a chicken coop. The very premise of the story reveals much of the flavor of magic realism. Cf. Postmodernism.
Search Google for Magic Realism:
Magic Adjective Synonyms: magical, enchanting, entrancing, bewitching, fascinating, hypnotic, mesmerizing, entrancing, spellbinding, charming, magnetic, ensorcelling
Magic Noun Synonyms: witchcraft, sorcery, wizardry, black magic, necromancy, black art, voodoo, obeahism, devilry or deviltry, diabolism, demonolatry, occultism, sortilege, theurgy, white magic, spell
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Entertainment / Literature / Realism: An elastic and ambiguous term with two meanings. (1) First, it refers generally to any artistic or literary portrayal of life in a faithful, accurate manner, unclouded by false ideals, literary conven MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Social Realism: In literature, a branch of realism, especially significant in Russian writing, that focuses on the lives of middle and lower class characters (see realism). At its worst, the movement becomes mere pro MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Surrealism: An artistic movement doing away with the restrictions of realism and verisimilitude that might be imposed on an artist. In this movement, the artist sought to do away with conscious control and instea MORE