Author：Stephen M. HART

Abstract: Introduction of the JFLC Special Column "Magical Realism: Theory, Theatre, Film"

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Jorge KISHIMOTO

Abstract: This paper begins by suggesting that travel between China and the Americas occurred long before the arrival of Christopher Columbus from Europe in the Caribbean, and the conference on “Latin America and China in World Literature” is, thus, to be seen as the resumption of a dialogue that had been interrupted rather than a completely new venture. The paper then moves to a discussion of the cultural meaning of magical realism which is seen as the symptom of the cultural upheaval caused by the chasm between the way the inhabitants of the Americas felt and understood reality, as contrasted with the values ...

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Theo D’HAEN

Abstract: The term magic(al) realism originated some one hundred years ago. Since then, it has been used to cover sometimes widely divergent literary productions. My argument will be that the success of magic(al) realism results from how it resonates with a set of literary-critical dispensations changing over time. I will discuss four of these.

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Elizabeth NIGHTINGALE

Abstract: Whilst the theoretical study of magical realist literature is broad and wide-ranging, there is a remarkable lack of consensus among critics on how the mode should be defined, how its techniques should be described, and how it corresponds with both the contexts of its production and its contemporary neighboring genres. This essay maps some of the dominant avenues that have been explored in the field, illuminating where the disagreements lie and highlighting the sheer profusion of critical approaches that have been competing for attention since magical realism first began to receive ...

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Wendy FARIS

Abstract: In this essay I will investigate the minor yet significant presence of animals in magical realist texts. That presence follows two main threads: what we might call “memories of the future” and “world spirit.” They are different phenomena, pointing up the breadth of magical realism: the first is historically oriented and often tied to particular entities; the second is more metaphysical, even universal in nature. But they are related in both imagining beyond paradigms of material progress, even, perhaps, of materiality itself. I will begin by conceptualizing what I think may be going on at a macro level, and then ...

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Maggie Ann BOWERS

Abstract: This paper explores the complexities of bringing the imaginative extremes of magical realism to the physical realm of the stage. Magical realism famously challenges the reader by demanding not just a suspension of belief but also a suspension of disbelief—it demands that we suspend our beliefs in the physical reality of our existence and move into a realm where we are required to accept the excesses of the imagination beyond what is usually considered to be fiction’s limits. Moreover, it requires the willingness on the part of the reader to take up the challenge of accepting what would be impossible in ...

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Geoffrey KANTARIS

Abstract: This paper examines how two contemporary Latin American films—Jayro Bustamante’s La Llorona and Ernesto Contreras’s Sueño en otro idioma—engage with physical and cultural genocide through distinct deployments of fantasy elements that reflect the evolution of horror and magic-realist genres in Latin American cinema. The films repurpose fantastical elements through horror and mythopoetic narrative in order to confront the legacies of colonial trauma. Building on Slavoj Žižek’s concept of the plague of fantasies, the paper examines how La Llorona mobilizes the Mesoamerican folk ...

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Stephen M. HART

Abstract: In this essay I focus on a subject that has not been treated at any great length in the past, that is, the relationship between magical realism and the videogame. This is surprising because even a cursory glance at the types of videogames that are currently available on the market shows that they are full of techniques and surprises and wonders that are characteristic of the genre of magical realism. This essay focuses on the overlap between the videogame genre and other related genres such as literature and film, particularly in terms of its use of the technique of magic.

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Yue YANG

Abstract: Known for her unconventional approach to shaping feminist aesthetics through writing, Virginia Woolf portrays a woman painter’s quest for autonomy in the novel To the Lighthouse. Critics have probed Woolf’s insightful rewriting of the sublime from different angles, but systemic research into her innovative refashioning of the feminine sublime in her novels remains inadequate. Applying the classic and feminist theories on the sublime and beauty, the article investigates how Woolf reimagines a new sublime mode for Lily Briscoe. The article first focuses on how Virginia Woolf writes her personal ...

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation

Author：Yanni LEI, Wei LU

Abstract: Despite the large body of literature on Lady Macbeth, little research has been undertaken to demonstrate the relationship between the invocation by Lady Macbeth in the first act and the final dreams that imprison her. From the perspectives of literary ethical criticism and Early Modern dream theories, this essay argues that the sleep-walking scene in the final act reveals the ethical predicament and the punishment suffered by Lady Macbeth, while the invocation, instead of serving merely as exaggerating rhetoric or performance of witchcraft, indicates Lady Macbeth’s ethical choice and her ...

Vol. 8 No. 2 Dec. 2024 Time：2025-01-13View Citation