![]() ![]() ![]() Combining interpretations of well-known literary texts from world literatures, with a specific focus on U. Situating magical realism within the expanse of literary and cultural history, this book acknowledges its revitalizing force as a literary narrative mode. Starting with Franz Roth's 1925 essay in which the term magical realism was coined, as well as Alejo Carpentier's classic 1949 essay that introduced the concept of lo real maravilloso to the Americas, this volume offers a wide range of critical perspectives and theoretical approaches to magical realism. Magical realism is often viewed as the literary product of Latin America. Thus, South African magical realist texts will be positioned at the intersection between literature of celebration and literature of disillusionment, emerging out of the short-lived coexistence of the two literary trends in South African literary history. While discussing magic realism in relation to the post-apartheid novels of André Brink and Zakes Mda, this article points towards the possible origins of the proliferation of South African texts embracing this narrative mode in the period directly following the demise of apartheid, as well as the possible reasons behind the gradual abandonment of magical realist narrative strategy in post-millennial South African fiction. Magical realism simultaneously relies heavily on African oral traditions, and in doing so, it not only constitutes a point of confluence for black and white writing of the apartheid era, but it also epitomises the reconciliation of Eurocentric Western rationalism and African tradition. I argue that South African magical realism goes beyond the joining of realist and postmodern narrative strands by reconciling realism’s faithfulness to the socio-political context and postmodernism’s devotion to formal experimentation, syncretism, and meta-fiction. ![]() This article discusses the emergence of magical realism as a narrative form embraced by a number of South African writers in the transition period and increasingly attuned to South African writing sensibility during this time. ![]()
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