Patriarchy and Power in Magical Realism

Patriarchy and Power in Magical Realism PDF Author: Maryam Ebadi Asayesh
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527500829
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Although the term magic(al) realism appeared in 1925 in pictorial art in Germany, it became well-known with the boom of magical realist fiction in Latin America in the 1960s. Since the 1980s, it has become one of the popular modes of writing worldwide. Due to its oxymoronic and hybrid nature, it has caught the attention of critics. Some have called it a postcolonial form of writing because of its prominence in postcolonial countries, while others have called it a postmodern mode because of the time of its emergence and the techniques applied in these kinds of novels. This book discusses how magical realism was used in the works of three contemporary female writers, Indigo or, Mapping the Waters (1992) by the British Marina Warner, The House of the Spirits (1982) by the Latin American writer Isabel Allende, and Fatma: a novel of Arabia (2002) by the Saudi Arabian Raja Alem. It shows how, by applying magical realism, these writers empowered women. Using revisionary nostalgia, these works changed the process of history writing by the powerful, showed the presence of women, and gave voice to their unheard stories. Even the techniques applied in these novels presented the clash with patriarchy and power.

Patriarchy and Power in Magical Realism

Patriarchy and Power in Magical Realism PDF Author: Maryam Ebadi Asayesh
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527500829
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 198

Get Book Here

Book Description
Although the term magic(al) realism appeared in 1925 in pictorial art in Germany, it became well-known with the boom of magical realist fiction in Latin America in the 1960s. Since the 1980s, it has become one of the popular modes of writing worldwide. Due to its oxymoronic and hybrid nature, it has caught the attention of critics. Some have called it a postcolonial form of writing because of its prominence in postcolonial countries, while others have called it a postmodern mode because of the time of its emergence and the techniques applied in these kinds of novels. This book discusses how magical realism was used in the works of three contemporary female writers, Indigo or, Mapping the Waters (1992) by the British Marina Warner, The House of the Spirits (1982) by the Latin American writer Isabel Allende, and Fatma: a novel of Arabia (2002) by the Saudi Arabian Raja Alem. It shows how, by applying magical realism, these writers empowered women. Using revisionary nostalgia, these works changed the process of history writing by the powerful, showed the presence of women, and gave voice to their unheard stories. Even the techniques applied in these novels presented the clash with patriarchy and power.

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

Cauldron of Changes

Cauldron of Changes PDF Author: Janice C. Crosby
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786408481
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
This book examines the spiritual dimensions found in the literature of the fantastic (science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism) by linking such novels to actual currents within the feminist spirituality movement. Fusing popular culture studies, women's studies, and close textual analysis, the author moves beyond earlier studies that fail to address the genre's use of goddess worship, psychic phenomena, and reverence for the earth. She reveals how such attributes betoken a spiritual awakening with profound implications for contemporary feminism. Special emphasis is given to both the struggle to provide an alternative to men-centered experience and to the need to articulate ways in which feminists can achieve personal and social power. The authors studied represent a variety of American voices, and include both firmly established and newer writers such as Marion Zimmer Bradley, Kim Chernin, Alice Walker, Mercedes Lackey, Patricia Kennealy, Gael Baudino, Octavia Butler, Lynn Abbey, Joan Vinge, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Ntozake Shange, and Starhawk.

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.

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.

The Insides

The Insides PDF Author: Jeremy P. Bushnell
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612195474
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
“With The Insides, Jeremy P. Bushnell doesn’t so much mash genres together as slice them apart to find the filets. It’s a literary urban fantasy with sharp things to say about the way we live now, darkened by a touch of Scandinavian thriller: rich and urgent and weird, a novel that defies categorization but demands to be consumed.” —Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore “The Insides begins with all the freewheeling magic and humor of The Weirdness, then ups the ante with danger, suspense, and rich emotional resonance. If you love fierce, witchy leading ladies, facing down evil, and traveling to strange realms that will explain your life before they haunt you forever, this is the book for you.” —Alyssa Harad, author of Coming to My Senses Ollie Krueger’s days as a punk kid practicing street magic are are mostly behind her. Now she’s a butcher at Carnage, a high-end restaurant offering deconstructed takes on meat. On busy nights Ollie and her partner, Guychardson, race to see who can produce the most finished cuts. Ollie’s the better butcher, but somehow Guychardson always wins ... and Ollie thinks maybe it’s because the mysterious knife he uses is magic. Before she knows it, Ollie’s interest in the knife has thrown her square in the path of a dangerous ex-marine called “Pig” and his hired psychic, Maja, who are on the hunt for the knife too—who want it so badly, in fact, that they might kill for it. Now, magic is back in Ollie’s life and she’s being chased through New York City, with the fabric of space-time tattering around her and weird inter-dimensional worms squirming their way into her kitchen. And before it's all over she’s going to need to face up to the Possible Consequences of some bad decisions, to look at the uncomfortable truths that she stuffed away long ago, deep down ... inside . . .

The Autumn of the Patriarch

The Autumn of the Patriarch PDF Author: Gabriel García Márquez
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
One of Gabriel García Márquez’s most intricate and ambitious works, The Autumn of the Patriarch is a brilliant tale of a Caribbean tyrant and the corruption of power. From charity to deceit, benevolence to violence, fear of God to extreme cruelty, the dictator of The Autumn of the Patriarch embodies the best and the worst of human nature. Gabriel García Márquez, the renowned master of magical realism, vividly portrays the dying tyrant caught in the prison of his own dictatorship. Employing an innovative, dreamlike style, and overflowing with symbolic descriptions, the novel transports the listener to a world that is at once fanciful and real.

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti PDF Author: Mohammed Hanif
Publisher: Bond Street Books
ISBN: 0385677286
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
From the author of the universally acclaimed debut novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes: a subversive, often shockingly funny new novel set in steaming Karachi, about second chances, thwarted ambitions, and love in the most unlikely places. The patients of the Sacred Heart Hospital for All Ailments need a miracle, and Alice Bhatti may be just what they're looking for. She's the new junior nurse, but that's the only thing ordinary about her. Her father is a part-time healer in the French Colony, Karachi's Christian slum--and it seems she has inherited his part-time gift. With a bit of begrudging but inspired improvisation, Alice brings succour to the patients lining the hospital's corridors. Yet, a Christian in an Islamic world, she is ensnared in the red tape of hospital bureaucracy, trapped by the caste system, and torn between her duty to her patients, her father, and her husband--an apprentice to the nefarious "Gentlemen's Squad" of the police, and about to plunge them both into a situation so dangerous that perhaps not even a miracle can save them. But, of course, Alice Bhatti is no ordinary nurse...

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.

Magic(al) Realism

Magic(al) Realism PDF Author: Maggie Ann Bowers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134493118
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 163

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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.