Uncertain mirrors : magical realisms in US ethnic literatures / Jesus Benito, Ana Ma Manzanas ; Begona Simal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benito Sánchez, Jesús.

Contributor:

Manzanas Calvo, Ana Ma. (Ana María)

Simal González, Begoña.

Series:

Critical approaches to ethnic American literature ; no. 3.

Critical approaches to ethnic American literature ; no. 3

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--Minority authors--History and criticism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (276 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, 2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Uncertain Mirrors realigns magical realism within a changing critical landscape, from Aristotelian mimesis to Adorno’s concept of negative dialectics. In between, the volume traverses a vast theoretical arena, from postmodernism and postcolonialism to Lévinasian philosophy and eco-criticism. The volume opens and closes with dialectical instability, as it recasts the mutability of the term “mimesis” as both a “world-reflecting” and a “world-creating” mechanism. Magical realism, the authors contend, offers another stance of the possible; it also situates the reader at a hybrid aesthetic matrix inextricably linked to postcolonial theory, postmodernism, Bakhtinian theory, and quantum physics. As Uncertain Mirrors explores, magical realist texts partake of modernist exhaustion as much as of postmodernist replenishment, yet they stem from a different “location of culture” and “direction of culture;” they offer complex aesthetic artifacts that, in their recreation of alternative geographic and semiotic spaces, dislocate hegemonic texts and ideologies. Their unrealistic excess effects a breach in the totalized unity represented by 19th century realism, and plays the dissonant chord of the particular and the non-identical.

Contents:

Preliminary Material / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Louise Erdrich’s “Father’s Milk”: Magical Realism’s Oxymoronic Nature / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Mimesis, Realism, and Counter-realisms / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Romance, the Imaginary, and Magical Realism / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

The Crisis of Representation: Post-realism, Postmodernism, Magical Realism / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Juxtaposed Realities: Magical Realism and/as Postcolonial Experience / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

From Identity to Alter-entity: Trans-selving the Self in Magical Realist Narratives / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Of a Magical Nature: The Environmental Unconscious / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

A Negative Sense of Reality / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Bibliography / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Index / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal

Authors / Jesús Benito , Ana M Manzanas and Begoña Simal.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-282-59442-7

9786612594427

90-420-2601-4

1-4416-1705-1

OCLC:

642819525

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789042026018 DOI