PROPER NAMES OF « STRANGE PILGRIMS » BY GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ IN THE CONTEXT OF MAGICAL REALISM

Abstract

In the given article, we examine the characteristic features of literary onyms functioning in the magical realism collection “Strange Pilgrims” by Gabriel García Márquez. The research has been done in the framework of modern onomastic studies. The results of the investigation show that proper names in each tale form an amalgam of real and fictional proper names. As for their function, real proper names create realistic backgrounds for the magical story, while fictional proper names add expressivity and contain implicit meanings. The research is also centered on the problem of the socalled “real” names compared to the names invented by the author. Our analysis of factual material enabled affirmation that the both types are of similar nature. The amalgam of “strange” anthroponyms and realistic toponyms is seen as the element of defamiliarization (the Russian term for it is “ostranenie”), which, in magical realism, means the balance between supernaturalisation (the fact of transforming the known world into the fantastic one) and naturalisation (the “banalisation” of the fantastic). Concerning the structure and the semantics of the names, we observe such types as hybrid or heteroclite names, parody names, names-allusions, and names-elements of metafiction. Hybrid or heteroclite names, typical of postmodernism, consist of elements of heterogeneous nature; they unite Spanish elements with, among others, elements of English-speaking culture. Names-elements of metafiction imply facticity of the described characters and events, thus making part of the so called Jakobsonian poeticity, “when a word is felt as a word and not a mere representation of the object being named”. The above mentioned observations conform to the peculiarities of magical realism as a sub-movement of postmodernism.