Myth and Magic realism in Atwoods Penlopiad and Marquezs 100 Years of Solitude - Research Paper Example

The term magical realism is a contradiction in terms, a paradox as it seeks to blend in one two concepts that exist on the two different spaces of the existential spectrum. The term seems confusing, misleading, and highly unlikely; raises many questions like how anything that is apparently real is magical or magic at the same time and vice versa. Nevertheless, Latin American writers are masters of interconnectedness of the quotidian and fantastical.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of these great writers who had extra ordinary literary skills and is a living practitioner of this skill.This particular paper will try and answer questions related to the use, features, and the effects of magic realism within the plots of two novels that are different in many ways and have one basic similarity-the usage of the concept pf magic realism in plot development and evolution. To this effect, the idea first would be to understand the meaning and the intricacies that are related to the concept of magic realism.

Moreover, it also contains an in-depth analysis of Myth and Magic realism in Atwood’s Penlopiad and Marquez’s 100 Years of Solitude.The term "mythology”, refers to myth. In the society or civilization in which the particular myth is told, may be by your grand parents or you get to know about them through books, it is usually considered as a true account of the remote past or we can say that we believe that the particular event happened in the remote past . Myths usually take place in a primordial age, when the world had not yet gained its current form.

These myths also helped historians and researchers to find out how the world gained its current form and how certain customs, institutions, and taboos were established. One of the foremost functions of myth is to establish models for behavior and religious experience. Introduction: The term “magic realism” originated by German art historian Franz Roh in Europe during the 1920's, he did so through his writings where as there was another Italian journal Novecento that served magic realism and it was edited by famous writer and critic Massimo Bontempelli.

According to him magic realism is a reaction of some sort of expressionism. It is obvious that people take time to accept any new concept and same happened with “magic realism” as well as mentioned above it was originated in 1920 but was adopted in 1940's by Latin American authors. Typically, the concept finds immense application in the works on Latin American authors like Marquez, but interestingly enough, it was not originally coined to describe their work. The label had its birth earlier within the works of young painters in Germany and Italy, during the decade of the 1920s.

it found new vigor in 1943 when New York Museum of Modern Art exhibited the works of Edward Hopper and Charles Sheeler. Authors to have applied the concept in their written works include names such as Franz Kafka, Gunter Grass, and John Fowles among others.