Magical Insurrections: Cultural Resistance and the Magic Realist Novel in Latin America

In spite of being one of the most widely used terms in Latin American literary criticism, little has been written on the cultural issues raised by magic realism. This thesis hopes to amend this in some way by tackling some of the issues magic realism raises in the context of cultural politics. The main argument of this thesis is that there is an underlying theme of cultural resistance in the Latin American magic realist novel, which draws its sustenance from the counter-hegemonic characteristics of popular culture. The thesis explores how the notion of cultural resistance has been incorporated into five Latin American magic realist novels: Asturias' Hombres de maíz, Carpentier's El reino de este mundo, Arguedas' Los ríos profundos, García Márquez' Cien años de soledad and Posse's Daimón. Other Latin American texts are also used for comparative purposes. The issues tackled in each chapter are as follows: Chapter 1 is devoted to a discussion of magic realism as a literary category and to the development of a definition. In Chapter 2 the literary, historical and ideological characteristics of the Latin American magic realist novel are identified, concentrating on the issue of cultural identity in Latin America and its role in the production of magic realism. Chapter 3 explores the concepts that will provide the critical tools to analyse the texts from a historical and political perspective: cultural resistance, hegemony and popular culture. Chapter 4 is devoted to an exploration of the social and economic basis of cultural resistance and to the "political economy" of magic realism. Chapter 5, finally, deals with language and cultural resistance in relation to the novels selected.