Editing Magical realism (section)

==Etymology and literary origins==
The term first appeared as the German ''magischer Realismus'' ('magical realism'). In 1925, German art critic [[Franz Roh]] used ''magischer Realismus'' to refer to a [[painterly]] style known as ''[[Neue Sachlichkeit]]'' ('New Objectivity'),<ref>Slemon, Stephen. 1988. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20180425234831/https://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/sslemon/slemon/canlit116-Magic(Slemon)%20(1).pdf Magic realism as post-colonial discourse]." ''[[Canadian Literature (journal)|Canadian Literature]]'' 116:9–24. {{doi|10.14288/cl.v0i116}}. Archived from the [https://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/sslemon/slemon/canlit116-Magic(Slemon)%20(1).pdf original] on 2018-04-25. p. 9.</ref><ref>[[Franz Roh|Roh, Franz]]. 1925. ''Nach-Expressionismus. Magischer Realismus. Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei''. Leipzig: Klinkhardt & Biermann.</ref> an alternative to [[expressionism]] that was championed by German museum director [[Gustav Hartlaub]].<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>{{rp|9–11}}<ref name="Guenther1995" />{{rp|33}} Roh identified magic realism's accurate detail, smooth photographic clarity, and portrayal of the 'magical' nature of the rational world; it reflected the [[uncanniness]] of people and our modern technological environment.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>{{rp|9–10}} He also believed that magic realism was related to, but distinct from, [[surrealism]], due to magic realism's focus on material object and the ''actual existence'' of things in the world, as opposed to surrealism's more abstract, psychological, and subconscious reality.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004" />{{rp|12}}

19th-century [[Romanticism|Romantic]] writers such as [[E. T. A. Hoffmann]] and [[Nikolai Gogol]], especially in their fairy tales and short stories, have been credited with originating a trend within Romanticism that contained "a European magical realism where the realms of fantasy are continuously encroaching and populating the realms of the real".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Introduction to the Special Issue: The Two-Hundred-Year Legacy of E. T. A. Hoffmann|last=Owen|first=Christopher|publisher=Anglia Ruskin University|year=2020|publication-place=London|chapter=Transgression of Fantastika|chapter-url=https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1542&context=marvels}}</ref> In the words of [[Anatoly Lunacharsky]]:

<blockquote>Unlike other romantics, Hoffmann was a satirist. He saw the reality surrounding him with unusual keenness, and in this sense he was one of the first and sharpest realists. The smallest details of everyday life, funny features in the people around him with extraordinary honesty were noticed by him. In this sense, his works are a whole mountain of delightfully sketched caricatures of reality. But he was not limited to them. Often he created nightmares similar to Gogol's ''[[The Portrait (short story)|Portrait]]''. Gogol is a student of Hoffmann and is extremely dependent on Hoffmann in many works, for example in ''Portrait'' and ''[[The Nose (Gogol short story)|The Nose]]''. In them, just like Hoffmann, he frightens with a nightmare and contrasts it to a positive beginning ... Hoffmann's dream was free, graceful, attractive, cheerful to infinity. Reading his fairy tales, you understand that Hoffmann is, in essence, a kind, clear person, because he could tell a child such things as ''[[The Nutcracker and the Mouse King|The Nutcracker]]'' or ''The Royal Bride'' – these pearls of human fantasy.<ref>{{Cite book|title=История западноевропейской литературы|last=Lunacharsky|first=Anatoly|publisher=Gosizdat|year=1924|publication-place=Moscow|chapter=Романтическая литература|chapter-url=https://lit.wikireading.ru/38678|language=Russian}}</ref></blockquote>

German magic-realist paintings influenced the Italian writer [[Massimo Bontempelli]], who has been called the first to apply magic realism to writing, aiming to capture the fantastic, mysterious nature of reality. In 1926, he founded the magic realist magazine ''900.Novecento,'' and his writings influenced Belgian magic realist writers [[Johan Daisne]] and [[Hubert Lampo]].<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>{{rp|13–14}}

Roh's magic realism also influenced writers in [[Hispanic America]], where it was translated in 1927 as ''realismo mágico''. Venezuelan writer [[Arturo Uslar-Pietri]], who had known Bontempelli, wrote influential magic-realist short stories in the 1920s and 30s that focused on the mystery and reality of how we live.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>{{rp|14–15}} [[Luis Leal (writer)|Luis Leal]] attests that Uslar Pietri seemed to have been the first to use the term ''realismo mágico''  in literature, in 1948.<ref>Leal, Luis. "Magical Realism in Spanish America." In ''MR: Theory, History, Community''. p. 120.</ref> There is evidence that Mexican writer [[Elena Garro]] used the same term to describe the works of [[E. T. A. Hoffmann]], but dismissed her own work as a part of the genre.<ref>Lopátegui, Patricia Rosas. 2006. ''El asesinato de Elena Garro''. México: [[Librería Porrúa|Porrúa]].</ref> French-Russian Cuban writer [[Alejo Carpentier]], who rejected Roh's magic realism as tiresome pretension, developed his related concept ''lo real maravilloso'' ('marvelous realism') in 1949.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>{{rp|14}} Maggie Ann Bowers writes that marvelous-realist literature and art expresses "the seemingly opposed perspectives of a pragmatic, practical and tangible approach to reality and an acceptance of magic and superstition" within an environment of differing cultures.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>{{rp|2–3}}

Magic realism was later used to describe the uncanny [[Realism (visual arts)|realism]] by such American painters as [[Ivan Albright]], [[Peter Blume]], [[Paul Cadmus]], [[Gray Foy]], [[George Tooker]], and Viennese-born [[Henry Koerner]], among other artists during the 1940s and 1950s. However, in contrast with its use in literature, magic realist art does not often include overtly [[Fantastique|fantastic]] or magical content, but rather, it looks at the mundane through a hyper-realistic and often mysterious lens.<ref name="Guenther1995" />

The term ''magical realism'', as opposed to ''magic realism'', first emerged in the 1955 essay "Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction" by critic Angel Flores in reference to writing that combines aspects of magic realism and marvelous realism.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004" />{{rp|16}} While Flores named [[Jorge Luis Borges]] as the first magical realist, he failed to acknowledge either Carpentier or Uslar Pietri for bringing Roh's magic realism to Latin America. Borges is often seen as a predecessor of magical realists, with only Flores considering him a true magical realist.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004" />{{rp|16–18}} After Flores's essay, there was a resurgence of interest in marvelous realism, which, after the [[Cuban Revolution of 1959|Cuban revolution of 1959]], led to the term ''magical realism'' being applied to a new type of literature known for matter-of-fact portrayal of magical events.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>{{rp|18}}

Literary magic realism originated in Latin America. Writers often traveled between their home country and European cultural hubs, such as Paris or Berlin, and were influenced by the art movement of the time.<ref name="Faris, Wendy B pp. 3-4"/><ref name=":2" /> Cuban writer [[Alejo Carpentier]] and Venezuelan [[Arturo Uslar-Pietri]], for example, were strongly influenced by European artistic movements, such as [[Surrealism]], during their stays in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/> One major event that linked painterly and literary magic realisms was the translation and publication of Franz Roh's book into Spanish by Spain's ''Revista de Occidente'' in 1927, headed by major literary figure [[José Ortega y Gasset]]. "Within a year, Magic Realism was being applied to the prose of European authors in the literary circles of Buenos Aires."<ref name="Guenther1995" />{{rp|61}} [[Jorge Luis Borges]] inspired and encouraged other Latin American writers in the development of magical realism – particularly with his first magical realist publication, ''[[Historia universal de la infamia]]'' in 1935.<ref name="jstor.org"/> Between 1940 and 1950, magical realism in Latin America reached its peak, with prominent writers appearing mainly in Argentina.<ref name="jstor.org"/> Alejo Carpentier's novel ''[[The Kingdom of This World]]'', published in 1949, is often characterised as an important harbinger of magic realism, which reached its most canonical incarnation in [[Gabriel García Marquez]]'s novel ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]'' (1967).<ref>Stephen M. Hart,Wen-chin Ouyang, ''A Companion to Magical Realism'' Boydell & Brewer 2005, p. 3</ref> [[Gabriel García Marquez|García Marquez]] cited [[Franz Kafka|Kafka]]'s "[[The Metamorphosis]]" as a formative influence: "The first line almost knocked me out of bed. It begins: 'As Gregor Samsa awoke from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.' When I read that line I thought to myself I didn't know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago." He also cited the stories told to him by his grandmother: "She told me things that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories, and everyone was surprised. In previous attempts to write ''[[One Hundred Years of Solitude]]'', I tried to tell the story without believing in it. I discovered that what I had to was believe in them myself and them write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Stone |first=Peter |date=1981 |title=Gabriel García Márquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69 |work=[[The Paris Review]] |url=https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction-no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez}}</ref>

The theoretical implications of visual art's magic realism greatly influenced European and Latin American literature. Italian [[Massimo Bontempelli]], for instance, claimed that [[literature]] could be a means to create a collective consciousness by "opening new mythical and magical perspectives on reality", and used his writings to inspire an Italian nation governed by [[Fascism]].<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/> Uslar Pietri was closely associated with Roh's form of magic realism and knew Bontempelli in Paris. Rather than follow Carpentier's developing versions of "the (Latin) American marvelous real", Uslar Pietri's writings emphasize "the mystery of human living amongst the reality of life". He believed magic realism was "a continuation of the '''vanguardia''' [or [[avant-garde]]] modernist experimental writings of Latin America".<ref name="Bowers, Maggie A. 2004"/>