3. A simple definition: Magical realism is a literary genre in which Realistic narrative is combined with surreal elements. Magic Realism is actually the fusion of fact and fantasy. (Surreal, adj: very strange or unusual; having the quality of a dream)

4.  In magical realism, the magic elements are a natural part of the world.  The magic in the story is often strange (it doesn't seem to fit in with the world as we know it), but it is accepted in the story.  Excellent magic realism uses magic without making you think about it - the magic is seamlessly integrated with the real world.

5.  Magical realism stories take place in a realistic setting. This usually means that the story is based in the "real world" rather than a fantasy land.  Aside from the magical element, the plot is realistic and believable.  The characters in magic realism stories are also very realistic and deal with everyday issues.

6.  Surrealism is a cultural movement and artistic style that was founded in 1924 by André Breton.  Surrealism style uses visual imagery from the subconscious mind to create art without the intention of logical comprehensibility.

7.  Both Surrealism and Magic Realism use a mixture of realism and fantastic elements.  The main differences lay in the content itself. The objective of the Magic Realist is to bring us fresh presentation of the everyday world we live in. The artist may choose unusual points of view, mysterious juxtapositions or common objects presented in uncanny ways. However, everything we see is within the realm of the possible, although sometimes unlikely.  Surrealism takes us to another world, one which is unreal and exists only in our mind. It presents the impossible, using both traditional and experimental artistic techniques, often shocking us.

8.  Magic Realism originated in 1940 is a literary movement associated with a style of writing or technique that incorporates magical or supernatural events into realistic narrative without questioning the improbability of these events.  The Movement originated in the fictional writings of Spanish American writers in the mid-twentieth century and is generally claimed to have begun in the 1940s with the Publication of two important novels: Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias and The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier.  Notice it says that these techniques have been around and in many cultures for many centuries but it wasn't really designated into a genre until the 1940s and it was in response to these Latin American authors.

10.  Hyperbole, or overstatement, is a figure of speech, or trope, that makes events or situations highly unlikely or improbable due to its gross exaggeration.  Magic realist texts tend to use hyperbole for both comic and serious effect.  Hyperbole may be used to make what is commonplace seem extraordinary and magical. This is a technique that Garcıa Marquez uses quite effectively to convey the mystery that ordinary objects, such as ice, for example, can have for those who have never been exposed to them: ‘‘When it was opened by the giant, the chest gave off a glacial exhalation. Inside there was only an enormous, transparent block with infinite internal needles in which the light of the sunset was broken up into colored stars.’’

11.  Imagery is an essential device used in magic realist works since the attempt to create aspects of reality that are unfathomable relies on convincing images.  Allende, Garcıa Marquez, and Carpentier use extensive description in their works, detailing the worlds they create with sensory images that communicate the mysteries of the natural world.  In The Kingdom of this World, a description of the sea is like peering into a kaleidoscope: ‘‘ It was garlanded with what seemed to be clusters of yellow grapes drifting eastward, needlefish like green glass, jellyfish that looked like blue bladders.”

12.  A main feature of magic realist writing is its attempt to incorporate numerous points of view into their narrative, many of which are drawn from popular or folk tales and are thus based more on popular understanding of events rather than originating from a specific character.  Point of view traditionally investigates the formal dimensions of how a story is told and who is telling it.  Magic realist texts often subvert these traditional notions of who is telling a story by presenting different versions of a particular event through a collective perspective, thus raising the question of which version is true.

13.  For example, in One Hundred Years of Solitude, the disappearance of Remedios the Beauty is described as having two versions.  The more descriptive one that is promoted by Remedios’s family is that she ascended into heaven, holding her bed sheets tightly in her hand, whereas the more mundane story has Remedios running off with a suitor.  However, because the village people of Macondo believe the family’s story, it is that version that becomes privileged despite its improbability.  Thus, point of view in this context suggests that reality is ascribed not by any sense of rationality but by what people are willing to believe.

14.  The frame or surface of the work may be conventionally realistic, even mundane.  Elements of fairy tale, mythology or other supernatural elements combine with everyday people, settings, and situations.  Characters do not often question surreal occurrences; they are accepted and dealt with as natural, even expected.

16.  As there is word Magic in the title of movement there must be some magical and mythical in the literature of Magic Realism.  This is why, a defining aspect of magic realist texts is the powerful capabilities of myth and magic to create a version of reality that differentiates itself from what is normally perceived as ‘‘real life.’’  The narratives of early explorers and clergy to Latin- America, and the spiritual magic of African slaves in different text shows the impact of Magic Realism on literature of that time.

17.  Magic Realism literature often proves as the critique of rationality and progress.  The use of magic and myth in magic realist fiction can be viewed as a critique of rationality and progress. Because many South American countries were economically exploited by countries in the industrialized West, first through slavery and exploration and then through economic imperialism, magic realist writers attempt to subvert the values that dominating cultures privilege in order to justify their exploitation of other cultures.  For example, Asturias’s Men of Maize consistently thwarts the notions of progress and rationality by presenting the perspectives of indigenous peoples as being outside of what most consider traditional concepts of time.

18.  Isabel Allende (1942-Present)  Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974)  Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)  Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980)  Laura Esquivel (1950-Present)  Gabriel Garcıa Márquez (1928– Present)

19.  Aura by Carlos Fuentes  Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges  The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende  Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcıa Márquez  The Kingdom of this World by Alejo Carpentier  The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov  Men of Maize by Miguel Angel Asturias  One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcıa Márquez