Magical Realism in Hispanic American Fiction: Themes and Techniques

Hispanic American Fiction: Magical Realism

The 1940s saw a focus on the unique American experience through an aesthetic blending realism and fantasy. This approach, known as magical realism, sought to capture the essence of the American world. It was a literary movement that renovated existing aesthetics tied to the European avant-garde, but with a distinct aim: to reflect American reality. In magical realism, the extraordinary is presented as ordinary, and the most fantastical events are grounded in everyday life.

This new reality is characterized by Hispanic stylistic innovation and a desire to unravel the American peculiarity through a synthesis of reality and fantasy. New themes emerged, including nature, the indigenous world, political issues, the urban landscape, and reflections on human and existential problems.

This renewal gained momentum in the 1960s with the Latin American Boom, led by a new generation of writers such as Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez. These authors blended the magical and the mundane, realizing the American peculiarity through refreshing fictional techniques like casual games, combined narratives, and counterpoint. The language was enriched with American terms, and the European world was invaded by American influences.

What makes America great is its modern reality, a unique identifier that doesn't neglect social criticism. The Boom works often reflected social injustice, the relationship with the indigenous world, and the problems of human existence through philosophical and existential questions. The search for American identity through its own mythology, folklore, and collective subconscious, mixed with the daily or historical reality of its inhabitants, is what gives rise to magical realism.

Magical realism is like a new Greek mythology, an attempt to shape American thought through its myths and legends. The Boom refers to the phenomenon by which Hispanic narrators gained the recognition they deserved on the universal literary scene.

Thematic Aspects of Magical Realism:

• Burst of imagination
• Interest in the urban world
• The human condition and the major problems facing human beings in society
• Eroticism

Formal Aspects of Magical Realism:

• The omniscient narrator gives way to the protagonist
• Time: Linear time is disrupted through temporary inversions
• Language

Narrative Resources of the Boom Novelists:

• Integration of fantasy and reality
• Confirmed extension issue: the structure of the story is the subject of experimentation

Narrative techniques include a breakdown of the plot, changes in viewpoint, a combination of narrative styles, free indirect style, and interior monologue.

Beneath all this lies the conviction of the practical and aesthetic failure of realism.