Magical Realism as a Tool of Empowerment in Selected Women's Novels

Magical Realism as a Tool of Empowerment in Selected Women's Novels PDF Author: Devona Mallory
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780549761747
Category : English fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Besides discussing the origins, definitions, elements and theories involving magical realism literature, I analyze the tools of empowerment that female characters utilize for personal development. These tools include, but are not limited to, female divinity, overcoming personal and communal issues, creating a viable space/place, analyzing magical realism through a critical and pedagogical lens, and discussing the possible future of magical realism. My ultimate goal for this dissertation is to take the tools learned from magical realism literature and apply them to help people overcome real-life obstacles; it is my desideratum that this approach may foster harmony in the world.

Magical Realism as a Tool of Empowerment in Selected Women's Novels

Magical Realism as a Tool of Empowerment in Selected Women's Novels PDF Author: Devona Mallory
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780549761747
Category : English fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Book Description
Besides discussing the origins, definitions, elements and theories involving magical realism literature, I analyze the tools of empowerment that female characters utilize for personal development. These tools include, but are not limited to, female divinity, overcoming personal and communal issues, creating a viable space/place, analyzing magical realism through a critical and pedagogical lens, and discussing the possible future of magical realism. My ultimate goal for this dissertation is to take the tools learned from magical realism literature and apply them to help people overcome real-life obstacles; it is my desideratum that this approach may foster harmony in the world.

Touba and the Meaning of Night

Touba and the Meaning of Night PDF Author: Shahrnush Parsipur
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
ISBN: 1558616314
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
An Iranian woman forges her own path through life in this “stylishly original contribution to modern feminist literature” (Publishers Weekly). After her father’s death, fourteen-year-old Touba takes her family’s financial security into her own hands by proposing to a fifty-two-year-old relative. But, intimidated by her outspoken nature, Touba’s husband soon divorces her. When she marries again, it is to a prince with whom she experiences tenderness and physical passion and bears four children—but their relationship sours when he proves unfaithful. Touba is granted a divorce, and as her unconventional life continues, she becomes the matriarch of an ever-changing household of family members and refugees . . . Hailed as “one of the unsurpassed masterpieces of modern Persian literature” (Iranian.com), Touba and the Meaning of Night explores the ongoing tensions between rationalism and mysticism, tradition and modernity, male dominance and female will—all from a distinctly Iranian viewpoint. Defying both Western stereotypes of Iranian women and expectations of literary form, this beautiful novel reflects the unique voice of its author as well as an important tradition in Persian women’s writing. “Parsipur’s novel carries the reader on a mystical and emotional odyssey spanning eight decades of Iranian cultural, political, and religious history . . . rewarding and enlightening.” —Booklist “A sweeping chronicle of modern Iranian history and a study of the plight of twentieth-century Iranian women . . . [displaying] deft utilization of magic realism and Persian myths . . . rich and well-crafted.” —Library Journal

The Power of Magic [microform] : Representations of Women in Selected Contemporary Magic Realist Fiction from Latin America, English Canada, and Québec

The Power of Magic [microform] : Representations of Women in Selected Contemporary Magic Realist Fiction from Latin America, English Canada, and Québec PDF Author: Annika Linda Hannan
Publisher: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada
ISBN: 9780612780675
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 726

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Book Description
This study explores the representation of women in contemporary magic realist texts from Latin America, English Canada, and Québec. From a feminist standpoint, it examines how men and women writers represent women characters in texts that allegorically use supernatural power to denaturalize social power. Intracultural and intercultural considerations of these New World texts reveal shared approaches, both positive and negative, to women's identities and roles. In the more progressive works--Isabel Allende's La casa de los espiritus, Jack Hodgins's The Invention of the World, Anne Hébert's Les fous de Bassan, and Michel Tremblay's La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte--women characters use naturalized supernaturalism (defined as the casual presence of the supernatural in the natural world) to affirm feminine subjectivity and freedom. The assumption of mythic forms or an engagement with the occult can give a female character mobility, spiritual freedom, and pleasure. But the power figuratively expressed through the supernatural is denied women in Gabriel Garcia Màrquez's Cien aňos de soledad, Sheila Watson's The Double Hook, Anne Hébert's "L'ange de Dominique," and Jacques Ferron's L'amélanchier. Moreover, masculine supernatural power is often affirmed through juxtaposition with a reduced form of feminine magic power. This latter form--in which a natural phenomenon is treated as supernatural--reinforces women's "natural" identities as passive, giving, and unpredictable beings. Indeed, the reader's sense of "nature" is disturbed so that s/he will reexamine, and thus confirm, what is "true." Although issues of identity, resistance, and tradition unite the texts as they challenge Old World ideologies and assert a New World consciousness, a denaturalization of women's stereotypical identities is not a common trait. In fact, problematic aspects of other supernatural traditions--such as the universality and hierarchy of traditional myth, or the limited feminine roles within fairy tales--reappear with new vigour. The magic feminist texts, however, subvert tired forms and themes by using them to empower women characters. They take advantage of magic realism's ability to disrupt "reality" in order to challenge the reader's sense of the known and the possible.

Short Stories by Latin American Women

Short Stories by Latin American Women PDF Author: Dora Alonso
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0812967070
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Celia Correas de Zapata, an internationally recognized expert in the field of Latin American fiction written by women, has collected stories by thirty-one authors from fourteen countries, translated into English by such renowned scholars and writers as Gregory Rabassa and Margaret Sayers Peden. Contributors include Dora Alonso, Rosario Ferré, Elena Poniatowska, Ana Lydia Vega, and Luisa Valenzuela. The resulting book is a literary tour de force, stories written by women in this hemisphere that speak to cultures throughout the world. In her Foreword, Isabel Allende states, “This anthology is so valuable; it lays open the emotions of writers who, in turn, speak for others still shrouded in silence.”

Magical Realism

Magical Realism PDF Author: Lois Parkinson Zamora
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822316404
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 598

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Book Description
On magical realism in literature

Magic(al) Realism

Magic(al) Realism PDF Author: Maggie Ann Bowers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134493126
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Bestselling novels by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and a multitude of others have enchanted us by blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Their genre of writing has been variously defined as 'magic', 'magical' or 'marvellous' realism and is quickly becoming a core area of literary studies. This guide offers a first step for those wishing to consider this area in greater depth, by: exploring the many definitions and terms used in relation to the genre tracing the origins of the movement in painting and fiction offering an historical overview of the contexts for magic(al) realism providing analysis of key works of magic(al) realist fiction, film and art. This is an essential guide for those interested in or studying one of today's most popular genres.

Dissertation Abstracts International

Dissertation Abstracts International PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description


Magical Realism and Literature

Magical Realism and Literature PDF Author: Kim Sasser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781108445023
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
"Magical realism can lay claim to being one of most recognizable genres of prose writing. It mingles the probable and improbable, the real and the fantastic, and it provided the late-twentieth century novel with an infusion of creative energy in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and beyond. Writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and many others harnessed the resources of narrative realism to the representation of folklore, belief, and fantasy. This book sheds new light on magical realism, exploring in detail its global origins and development. It offers new perspectives of the history of the ideas behind this literary tradition, including magic, realism, otherness, primitivism, ethnography, indigeneity, and space and time"--

Ordinary Enchantments

Ordinary Enchantments PDF Author: Wendy B. Faris
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
ISBN: 9780826514424
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Ordinary Enchantments investigates magical realism as the most important trend in contemporary international fiction, defines its characteristics and narrative techniques, and proposes a new theory to explain its significance. In the most comprehensive critical treatment of this literary mode to date, Wendy B. Faris discusses a rich array of examples from magical realist novels around the world, including the work not only of Latin American writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but also of authors like Salman Rushdie, Gunter Grass, Toni Morrison, and Ben Okri. Faris argues that by combining realistic representation with fantastic elements so that the marvelous seems to grow organically out of the ordinary, magical realism destabilizes the dominant form of realism based on empirical definitions of reality, gives it visionary power, and thus constitutes what might be called a "remystification" of narrative in the West. Noting the radical narrative heterogeneity of magical realism, the author compares its cultural role to that of traditional shamanic performance, which joins the worlds of daily life and that of the spirits. Because of that capacity to bridge different worlds, magical realism has served as an effective decolonizing agent, providing the ground for marginal voices, submerged traditions, and emergent literatures to develop and create masterpieces. At the same time, this process is not limited to postcolonial situations but constitutes a global trend that replenishes realism from within. In addition to describing what many consider to be the progressive cultural work of magical realism, Faris also confronts the recent accusation that magical realism and its study as a global phenomenon can be seen as a form of commodification and an imposition of cultural homogeneity. And finally, drawing on the narrative innovations and cultural scenarios that magical realism enacts, she extends those principles toward issues of gender and the possibility of a female element within magical realism.

Magical Realism and Literature

Magical Realism and Literature PDF Author: Christopher Warnes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108621759
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 730

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Book Description
Magical realism can lay claim to being one of most recognizable genres of prose writing. It mingles the probable and improbable, the real and the fantastic, and it provided the late-twentieth century novel with an infusion of creative energy in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and beyond. Writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and many others harnessed the resources of narrative realism to the representation of folklore, belief, and fantasy. This book sheds new light on magical realism, exploring in detail its global origins and development. It offers new perspectives of the history of the ideas behind this literary tradition, including magic, realism, otherness, primitivism, ethnography, indigeneity, and space and time.