| Description |
The purpose of this thesis is to set a new approach to the study of magical realism. Although much critical work has been done on this concept, as this paper shows, little had direct relevance to specific writings of this style. Most theories often either neglected the true magical-realist novels or sought out definitions from works too foreign to even address the Latin American culture. It was more recently that new critical approaches began to involve the Latin American novel for the first time. This was caused by two important events: the revival of Carpentier's prologue to EI reino de este mundo and the publication of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. The first one brought back "10 real maravilloso," inherent in "themes" that combine the history and culture of the Latin American life. The second event took to a higher level Rulfo' s magical-realist solutions over the concerns ofAsturias and Carpentier on how to successfully present this style. In 1955, Juan Rulfo published Pedro Paramo, the first literary novel to find essential solutions to the problems of magical realism. As this thesis studies, Rulfo' s success is found in the "themes" that make up his novel. Among these themes is his greatest contribution to magical realism, the use of a primitive viewpoint (rural, folkloric) that allows for a closer experience to Hispanic life. His next solution was to break down the narrative to two non-chronological stories, braided into one and narrated from the memory of ghosts. By suppressing the third-person narrative, Rulfo permits a cultural viewpoint in Pedro Paramo thus enforcing the participation of the reader's modern world with the book's traditional influence. Rulfo's third solution is the use of historical; allegories which reference the history of Latin America, especially the impact of the; Aztecs and Spaniards in the Mexican culture. This allows for the integration of the "primitive myth", one of the key characteristics in magical realism. The last theme in Pedro Paramo is the author's own memory and experiences that take on the form of a personal myth. This last characteristic is, perhaps, Garda Marquez greatest success in magical realism. Influenced by his grandmother about the history and people of his native Colombia, Garda Marquez blends, like no other modem writer, Latin American life and experience as magical-realist sources. As introduced by Rulfo, Garda Marquez also suppresses the narrative viewpoint to neutralize the problems of authority in magical realism, stretching the modern limits of credibility and never offering an explanation for the events. It is in the suppression of a narrator that a new time line, circular and repetitive, emerges from the novel. As established by Rulfo, magical realism is also characterized by historical allegories, giving a vision of America and its people. However, One Hundred Years of Solitude relies on Biblical allusions (from the Genesis to the Apocalypse), more than what Pedro Paramo did. |
