Magic realism

Magic realism (or magical realism) is a literary genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting. The term was coined in the 1920s by a German art critic to describe a trend in post-Expressionist German art (see History below), but it is most often associated with the Latin American literary boom of the twentieth century, marked by the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez in 1967, which is considered the seminal magical realist text. Magical realism can be detected in the supernatural tales of E.T.A. Hoffman, which are related in the down-to-earth tone of confessional journalism. Magical realism may be viewed as more than a specific historical-geographical literary movement; it is an element of style that can be located in a large variety of novels, poetry, painting, and even film.

Common aspects of magical realist novels

The following elements are found in many magical realist novels, but not all are found in each novel and many are found in novels that fall under other genres.

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• Contains a magical element
• The magical element may be intuitive but is never explained
• Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element
• Exhibits a richness of sensory details
• Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent. Another technique is to collapse time in order to create a setting in which the present repeats or resembles the past.
• Inverts cause and effect, for instance a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs
• Incorporates legend or folklore
• Presents events from multiple perspectives, such as that of belief and disbelief or the colonizers and the colonizeds
• May be an overt rebellion against a totalitarian government or colonialism
• May be set in or arise from an area of cultural mixing
• Uses a mirroring of either past and present, astral and physical planes, or of characters