The Magic and the Real in Magical Realism: The Work of Gioconda Belli as a Paradigm

Abstract

"In thinking about Magical Realism in literature, readers might envision works fraught with a sense of the fantastic—in short, any kind of narrative invested with magical undertones. The term 'Magical Realism' was originally coined by Franz Roh in 1924 to describe 'the new paintings' return to realism after Expressionism's more abstract style' (15). Magical Realism, applied to Latin American literature, has a different connotation from the one Roh originally envisioned. Scholars in the region use the descriptor to speak about the literary works of the authors of the 'Boom Generation' (Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar, and Gabriel García Márquez, among others) as well as to examine the narratives the pre-Boom Cuban writer, Alejo Carpentier, describes in his examination of the real maravilloso (Marvelous Realism), the genre which paved the way for Magical Realism."