A Companion to Magical Realism, Stephen Hart et Wen-chin Ouyang (éds)

HART, Stephen M. and Wen-chin OUYANG (edts), A Companion to Magical Realism, Woodbridge, Tamesis Books, 2005, 304 p.

ISBN: 1855661209

This new Companion to Magical Realism provides an assessment of the world-wide impact of a movement which was incubated in Germany, flourished in Latin America and then spread to the rest of the world. It provides a set of up-to-date assessments of the work of writers traditionally associated with magical realism such as Gabriel García Márquez [in particular his recently published memoirs], Alejo Carpentier, Miguel ngel Asturias, Juan Rulfo, Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel and Salman Rushdie, as well as bringing into the fold new authors such as W.B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, José Saramago, Dorit Rabinyan, Ovid, María Luisa Bombal, Ibrahim al-Kawni, Mayra Montero, Nakagami Kenji, José Eustasio Rivera and Elias Khoury, discussed for the first time in the context of magical realism.
Written in a jargon-free style, and with all quotations translated into English, this book offers a refreshing new interdisciplinary slant on magical realism as an international literary phenomenon emerging from the trauma of colonial dispossession. The companion also has a Guide to Further Reading.

Stephen Hart is Professor of Hispanic Studies, University College London and Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru.

Wen-chin Ouyang lectures in Arabic Literature and Comparative Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies,

London.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Globalization of Magical Realism: New Poltics of Aesthetics [with Wen-chin Ouyang]

• Introduction: Globalization of Magical Realism: New Politics of Aesthetics [with Stephen M Hart]

• Section I: Introduction: Genealogies, Myths, Archives

• Swords and Silver Rings: Magical Objects in the Work of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez

• The Presence of Myth in Borges, Carpentier, Asturias, Rulfo and García Márquez

• The Earth as Archive in Bombal, Parra, Asturias and Rulfo [with Julia King]

• Alejo Carpentier's Re-invention of América Latin as Real and Marvellous

• The Golden Age Myth in Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Ovid's Metamorphoses

• Lessons from the Golden Age in Gabriel García Márquez's Living to Tell the Tale

• Section II: Introduction: History, Nightmare, Fantasy

• History and the Fantastic in José Saramago's Fiction

• Magical-Realist Elements in José Eustasio Rivera's The Vortex

• Beyond Magic Realism in The Red of His Shadow by Marya Montero

• Cops, Robbers, and Anarcho-terrorists: Crime and Magical Realism's Jewish Question

• Flights of Fancy: Angela Carter's Transgressive Narratives

• Section III: Introduction: The Politics of Magic

• Humour and Magical Realism in El reino de este mundo

• Magical Realism and Children's Literature: Isabel Allende's La Ciudad de las Bestias

• Unsavoury Representations in Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate

• Not so Innocent - An Israeli Tale of Subversion: Dorit Rabinyan's Persian Brides

• Magical Realism as Ideology: Narrative Evasions in the Work of Nakagami Kenji

• Legend, Fantasy and the Birth of the New in `Los funerales de la Mamá Grande by Gabriel García Márquez

• Section IV: Introduction: Empire, Nation, Magic

• Magical Nationalism, Lyric Poetry and the Marvellous: W. B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney

• Empire and Tribal Magic in a Tuareg Epic: Ibrahim al-Kuni's Lunar Eclipse

• Magical Realism and Nomadic Writing in the Maghreb

• Of Numerology and Butterflies: Magical Realism in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses

• From The Thousand and One Nights to Magical Realism: Postnational Predicament in The Journey of Little Ghandi by Elias Khoury

• Guide to Further Reading [with Kenneth Reeds]

• Select Bibliography