Topic > The origin and development of magical realism

The emergence of the term Magical Realism, which is mistakenly associated with Latin American literature, sometimes naively with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, has its roots before the its appearance on the American continent. Bowers (2004) divides the chronological evolution of Magical Realism into three significant periods and places: Germany in the 1920s, Central America in the 1940s and Latin America followed by the rest of the world starting from 1955. For distinguish between the three suggested periods, Bowers attributes three specific variations to each of the above-mentioned periods: Magical Realism, Wonderful Realism, and Magical Realism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayIt began in Germany with the art critic Franz Roh and his Post-Expressionism, Magical Realism: Problems of Latest European Painting. Indeed, there is almost unanimity on Franz Roh's coining of the term. Franz Roh's idea is an attempt to define the pictorial wave that distanced itself from expressionism by advocating "a return to a more realistic style after the abstraction of expressionism". Roh identified a magical realist/post-expressionist trend interested in photographic and detailed representation of the “non-material mystical aspects of reality” giving rise to a wave of “neo-realistic” paintings. Imbert (1975) and Camayd-Freixas (2014) discuss the term from a Hegelian position; Magical realism is the result of impressionist and expressionist dialectics. The impressionist thesis "faithful to the nature of objects" and its expressionist antithesis which focuses on "non-existent" or "disfigured" objects result in the synthesis brought by Roh's Magical Realism which offers a realistic representation of the magical or a "New Objectivity". Magical realist painters share the same psychological interest with their surrealist contemporaries; however, while surrealists focus on internal, abstract reality, magical realists emphasize concrete external reality. Therefore, surrealist psychoanalytic influence adds to the effort to represent the external object from a defamilized angle to form magical realism or New Objectivity. The alienating aspect does not distort the object as in the case of surrealism and expressionism, but rather offers a realistic representation of it with all its magical dimension. thus, despite their psychoanalytic influence, magical realists capture the internal through the concrete external object, unlike surrealists who emphasize the internal more carefully against an inadequate representation of the external world that neglects the internal side. Roh's critical views unique to painting transcend the visual arts to integrate literature. with the Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli. Although initially influenced by Surrealism, Bontempelli's works offer "the mysterious and fantastic quality of reality". Therefore, his effort corresponds to Roh's views on magical realism. The dialectic of Roh's critical views on plastic art can also apply to literature: the thesis of literary realism together with the antithesis advanced by fantasy literature results in a category that combines both of those that Imbert (1975) labels “Strange”. However, it is the Cuban author and critic Alejo Carpentier who is associated with the second phase in the development of the term listed by Bowers. The 1940s offered Carpentier's Lo Realismo Maravillioso, translated as Marvelous Realism, which highlights the different cultural contexts between Europe and Latin America. He considers his version different from Roh's Magical Realism since the latter is structured on “boring pretensions”..