Journal #8: Magical Realism

1. Journal #8: Magical Realism Learning Targets: • Students will be able to define, pronounce, and provide an example of hyperbole. • Students will be able to define and identify the genre Magical Realism in a text, and differentiate it from other genres. • Students will be able to list and explain the 5 components of Magical Realism. • Students will be able to define mundane, genre, and allusion. • Students will be able to define Social commentary.

2. Our next novel: Bless Me, Ultima We’ll check books out Friday and start reading Monday. Annotating your own copy would help! Bless Me, Ultimais long!

3. Who thinks they can pronounce “HYPERBOLE”? • What does it mean?

4. Who thinks they can pronounce “HYPERBOLE”? • Its actually pronounced: • [hahy-pur-buh-lee] • Practice with a neighbor • Hyperbole: an explicitly exaggerated statement or claim, not meant to be taken literally. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUzScx6_lWg

5. Hyperbole With a partner come up with three commonly used hyperboles. • _____________ • _____________ • _____________ ^These are hyperbolic statements

6. What is a “Genre”? What different genres can you think of? Genre: a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.

7. Magical Realism Definition: • A genre, where the narrative (story) blends magical elements with reality. • In Magical Realism stories the setting/world is realistic and even mundane (boring or unexceptional) but subtle elements of magic or the supernatural are intertwined and seen as ‘normal.’ • Often stories are told from the perspective of people who live in our world and experience a different reality from the one we call objective. • Magical Realism can often be confused with science fiction or fantasy, but there are important differences. • Originated in Latin America as a literary tradition.

8. Magical Realism vs. Fantasy vs. Science Fiction Pat Murphy writes, “In science fiction, if everyone is walking around with a talking monkey on his head, you need an explanation for it. In Magic Realism, everyone acts as if the monkeys have always been there.” • What does this quote tell you that may be important to know about the magical realism genre? Fantasy magic is systematic: there are rules, if implicit, dictating who can perform it, and what it can do, and how. Distinctions are drawn between magicians and Muggles, enchanted items and normal kitchenware. Magic is extraordinary, supernatural, paranormal—anything but quotidian (mundane, or of or occurring every day; daily)—and the staggering implications of its existence are explored and illustrated. This is NOT true of magical realism. • What does this quote tell you that may be important to know about the magical realism genre?

9. Magical Realism vs. Fantasy vs. Science Fiction Create a graphic* to demonstrate the differences between the three genres based off some quick internet research. *doesn’t have to be a venn diagram

10. The 5 components of Magical Realism • Realistic Elements: ‘Normal’ or mundanecharacters, dialogue, and setting. • Magical Elements: Mysterious, magical, or supernatural elements • Authorial Reticence: “Deliberate withholding of informa-tionand explanations about the disconcerting fictitious world.” • The narrator is indifferent, a characteristic enhanced by this absence of explanation of the fantastic events; the story proceeds with "logical precision" as if nothing extraordinary took place. Magical events are presented as ordinary occurrences; therefore, the reader accepts the marvelous as normal and common.

11. Magic in Magical Realism Examples: Magical Realismis infused into the world of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s circular, spellbinding novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. In one powerful instance, yellow flowers fall from the sky, in mourning, it seems, for a powerful character’s death. • One Hundred Years of Solitudehas a strong claim that it might be the best book ever written. Aimee Bender’s novel The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, is about a girl whose life is realistic in every way, except that she can taste the feelings of the chef in the foods that she eats.

12. The 5 components of Magical Realism 3. Humor and Hyperboles • E. B. White said, “Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” • Although definitions of humor differ somewhat, depending what academic perspective being used, most scholars agree that humor is rooted in expectation and surprise. • One of the fundamental aspects of humor is that it disrupts expectations. • It violates our logical perceptions of the normal. • For now, focus on: absurd details, hyperbole, exaggerations, and ridiculous sitations.

13. The 5 components of Magical Realism 4. Distortions of time and identity • Characters may change into other characters, • lines between living and dead may be blurred, • time may not flow in a linear path, or there may be multiple layers to events

14. The 5 components of Magical Realism 5.Social commentary • the act of using art to provide the author’s commentary (opinion, analysis, judgment, and/or explanation) on issues in a society/culture. • This is done with the idea of promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and appealing to people's sense of justice through art.

15. Social Commentary in Magical Realism In his review of Gabriel Garcia Márquez' novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Salman Rushdie argues that the formal experiment of magic realism allows political ideas to be expressed in ways which might not be possible through more established literary forms: "El realismo magical", magic realism, at least as practiced by Márquez, is a development out of Surrealism that expresses a genuinely "Third World" perspective. It deals with what "half-made" societies, in which the impossibly old struggles against the appallingly new, in which public corruptions and private anguishes are somehow more garish and extreme than they ever get in the so-called "North", where centuries of wealth and power have formed thick layers over the surface of what's really going on. In the works of Márquez, as in the world he describes, impossible things happen constantly, and quite plausibly, out in the open under the midday sun. Often times the social commentary of Magical Realism is anti-imperialist or colonialist.

16. Whew… that was a lot of notes…With a partner, create a short magical realism story about this image.

17. Magical Realism Short Story The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.