World Literature: Magical Realism
Standards:
Students will:
1. read with understanding and respond thoughtfully to a variety of texts; 2. Create
works using the language arts in visual, oral and written texts; 3. Understand and
appreciate texts from many historical periods and cultures.
Understandings:
Latin American authors share many aspects of their literary and cultural heritage with US
authors.
Magical Realism was strongly influenced by the American Romance tradition and by
literary modernism.
The oxymoronic nature of the term itself implies a hybrid relationship between not just
the magical and the real, but between the indigenous and the European, the Anglo and the
Latino, the mythological and the historical, the objective and the subjective.
Essential Questions:
How does Latin-American fiction force US readers to reconsider their understandings of
the term ‘American’?
How does the supernatural in literature force readers to question objective reality?
What is the relationship between myth and history?
What is the relationship between the hybrid nature of Latin-American culture and the
evolution of Magical Realism as a literary form?
Why are the works of American Romancers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne so appealing to
Latin-American authors?
Why do literary modernism and Magical Realism share so many features of narrative
technique?
Knowledge and Skill:
Students will know:
1. The definitions of all relevant terms, such as Magical Realism, literary modernism,
American Romance tradition; 2. Basic historical facts concerning the encounter between
Europe and the Americas, as well as basic historical facts concerning relations between
the United States and Latin America, specific to each literary work studied.
Students will be able to:
1. Apply their newly acquired knowledge and their analytical skills to the task of
interpreting a variety of texts; 2. Compose essays which develop theses specific to the
cultural, historical and literary contexts of the studied texts.
Performance Tasks and Other Evidence:
1. Compose a narrative which emulates Magical Realist topics and techniques.
2. Compose an essay which develops a relevant thesis.
3. Compose a research paper which explores the history and/or culture of a region of
Latin America or a period in Latin American history.
4. Compose a comparative essay which discusses issues of translation, perhaps using
only a portion of a novel or a short story.
5. Reading quizzes.
6. Unit tests.
7. Reading journals.
8. Group or individual presentations.
Learning Activities:
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Read novels and/or short stories.
Maintain a reading journal.
Participate in small and large group discussions.
Study for and complete a variety of quizzes and/or tests.
Perform any necessary or required research.
Compose drafts of essays or other assigned products, such as those listed above.
Participate in peer response groups and teacher conferences.
Complete final drafts of writing assignments.
Present creative or researched projects to classmates.
Required and/or Suggested Texts:
Miguel Angel Asturias, Guatemalan, El señor presidente/President (1946) and Hombres
de maize/Men of Maize (1949)
Alejo Carpentier, Argentinian, El reino de este mundo/The Kingdom of this World
(1949)
Juan Rulfo, Mexican, El llano en llamas y otros cuento/Burning Plain and Other Stories
(1953) and Pedro Páramo (1955)
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian, Ficciones (1956)
Carlos Fuentes, Mexican, La muerte de Artemio Cruz/The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962)
and Aura (1965)
Julio Cortázar, Argentinian, Final del juego/Blow-up, and Other Stories (1964)
Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian, Cien años de soledad/One Hundred Years of
Solitude (1967) and El otoño de la patriarca/The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975)
Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian, Conversacion en la catedral/Conversation in the
Cathedral (1969)
Rudolfo Anaya, Chicano (New Mexico), Bless Me, Última (1972)
Manuel Puig, Argentinian, El beso de la mujer araña/The Kiss of the Spiderwoman
(1976)
Luisa Valenzuela, Argentinian, Los censores/The Censors (1976)
Isabel Allende, Chilean, La casa de los espiritus/House of the Spirits (1982) and Eva
Luna (1991)
Arturo Islas, Chicano (Texas), The Rain God (1984)
Antonio Skármeta, Chilean, Ardiente paciencia/Burning Patience (1985)
Helena María Viramontes, Chicana (California), The Moths and Other Stories (1985)
Christina García, Cuban, Dreaming in Cuban (1992)
Helpful Critical Works:
John Sutherland Christie, Latino Fiction and the Modernist Imagination: Literature of
the Borderlands (1995)
Gerald Martin, Journeys Through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the
Twentieth Century (1989)
Roberto González Echevarría, Myth and Archive: Toward a Theory of Latin American
Narrative (1990)
Supplemental Texts:
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tales (1987, 1837-1851), The Scarlet
Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851), and The Blithedale Romance
(1852)
Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1837) and The Selected
Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (2004, 1840-50)
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851), Pierre (1852), Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853),
Benito Cereno (1855), and Billy Budd (1962, 1891)
John Dos Passos, U.S.A. (The 42nd Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) (1938, 1930-36)
William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary
(1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), and Go Down, Moses (1942)