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![Magic – “in which every lucid and determined detail is a prophecy”The marvelous and the everyday intertwine, and it is obvious that, for the narrator, no distance or hierarchy separates them [...]. Magic is an example of causality like any other. - Borges](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/kristinborges-100510185751-phpapp01/85/Kristin-borges-final-11-320.jpg)
![Fantastic LiteratureA creation of a world and not a replica of the worldA particular situation must be resolved within the text’s own internal laws and this resolution will give the plot solidity, elegance and a lasting qualityThe fantastic tradition is lacking in our literature. Our laziness prefers the amorphous tranche de vie or the mere accumulation of events. This is the reason why BioyCasares’s book is unusual ... [I]n its best pages, imagination answers to a particular order. - Borges, 1937](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/kristinborges-100510185751-phpapp01/85/Kristin-borges-final-13-320.jpg)
Kristin borges final
- 1. A “SUPERIOR MAGIC”:LITERARY POLITICS AND THE RISE OF THE FANTASTIC IN LATIN AMERICAN FICTIONPABLO BRESCIA
- 2. History of FantasticLiteratureColonial EraPre-Hispanic cosmogonies/belief systems in how the world came to beEuropean colonizers mix of Medieval moral grounding and Renaissance enterprisingNineteenth CenturyFantastic becomes codified but still only on the margins of literary worldRealist and Naturalist novel dominateRegional fiction dominate in Latin AmericaMid-1930’s Latin American Writers Growing Utilization of the Fantastic1940-1965 Golden Age of the Fantastic in Latin American Literature
- 3. The Book ofFantasyPublished in 1940 – Jorge Luis Borges, SilvinaOcampo and Adolfo BioyCasaresWatershed in the development of the fantastic
- 4. Soft manifesto forthe fantastic in Latin America
- 5.
- 6. Provided a wayof reading that allowed for the presence of many genres, locations and periods in history
- 7. Included writings fromArgentina, Europe, the Middle East and East Asia
- 8. Examples: Edgar AllenPoe, Guy de Maupassant, H.G. Wells, James Joyce, Leo Tolstoy and James FrazerBorges’ Reading CodeInternationalOpenHedonisticArgentine prose did not go beyond diatribe, satire or chronicle until Borges elevated it to the fantastic-- Borges, Obrascompletas(1974
- 9. “The fact thatan Argentine can write about a German version of a Russian translation of stories imagined in Turkistan speaks about the superior magic of these tales. It emphasizes the multiplicity of time and space and is almost an invitation to metaphysics”-- Jorge Luis Borges, August 1926, in the newspaper La Prensa, Borges reviewed the anthology Stories from Turkistan
- 10. Do You Believein Magic?Frazer’s Law of SympathyThings act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy with two distinct causalities:The Natural – “incessant result of endless, uncontrollable causes and effects”
- 11. Magic – “inwhich every lucid and determined detail is a prophecy”The marvelous and the everyday intertwine, and it is obvious that, for the narrator, no distance or hierarchy separates them [...]. Magic is an example of causality like any other. - Borges
- 12. ThematicsNineteenth century –used to instill fearContemporary - based on the introduction of an incredible event into a believable fictional worldClassic motifs: ghosts, time travel, the three wishes, the descent to hell, dreams, metamorphoses, parallel plots, immortality, metaphysical fantasies, vampires and castlesMain themes: the text inside the text, reality vs. dream, time travel and the double as the basic forms of fantastic fiction
- 13. Fantastic LiteratureA creationof a world and not a replica of the worldA particular situation must be resolved within the text’s own internal laws and this resolution will give the plot solidity, elegance and a lasting qualityThe fantastic tradition is lacking in our literature. Our laziness prefers the amorphous tranche de vie or the mere accumulation of events. This is the reason why BioyCasares’s book is unusual ... [I]n its best pages, imagination answers to a particular order. - Borges, 1937
Editor's Notes
- #2 Brescia’s essay examines: what Borges understood fantastic literature to be and why he campaigned in its favor
- #3 Cosmogony:theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of the universe, or about how reality came to beColonial eg:From Chaac, the Mayan god of rain and thunder, to the New World “sirens” seen by Christopher Columbus, oral tales and written documents constituted an archive for the fantastic
- #5 International – appropriation of the European canon; we read and discussed this argument for the Latin American writer’s right to read, appropriate and play with traditions and genres in “The Argentine Writer and Tradition”Open – it can be used as a starting point in debates about poeticsHedonistic – emphasizing subjective pleasure as a plausible criterion for judging textual value(READ QUOTE) In a note to the edition of his Obrascompletas (1974), Borges invents his own entry in an imaginary South American Encyclopedia from 2074. Even in this lighthearted context, Argentine literature has been elevated to the fantastic thanks to Borges, and this is a clear sign of the place he wanted for himself and for fantastic literature.
- #6 His review lays bare the type of reading Borges wants to promote: from Turkistan to Argentina, filtered by a Russian and a German reader.
- #7 ‘what is most relevant for Borges’ practice and conceptualization of the fantastic is the attraction to what he calls “magic”’ 1932 “Narrative Art and Magic” – Borges uses Frazer’s law of sympathy to describe his literary strategy of utilizing magic as a narrative method where ‘the precise articulation of dissimilar events are brought about by ‘magic’ causality’ Borges later associates magic as a narrative mode with fantastic lit ‘Borges was interested in the philosophy of literary form and saw fantastic literature as a site in which to explore the problems of narrative construction and causality ‘
- #9 By1937, Bresica describes Borges as ‘ready to take on the hegemony of the realist-regionalist paradigm by equating fantastic literature with the best literary “procedure” for Argentine literature at the time’ (READ QUOTE – Review of BioyCasares’ Luis Greve, Deceased)Emphasized theartificial nature of literature – literature is a creation of a world…Author describes Borges as having ‘a rigorous conception of the literary that emphasised an autonomous causality distinct from how things function in the real world’
- #10 prologue to BioyCasares’ novel La invencio ́n de Morel [The Invention of Morel], also from 1940underlines the differences between the “adventure story” – which, for him, is frequently inscribed in the fantastic mode – and the “psychological novel” the latter is “formless” and “wants to have us forget that it is a verbal artifice”; whilst the former is “an artificial object, no part of which lacks justification”
- #12 Borges explains in his lecture from 1949 (READ QUOTE 1)Fantastic literature is more open to the imagination while the “realist” procedure is a rather new tradition, younger than the age-old mythologies, philosophies and religious systems that gave form to “reality”. The genius of Borges makes him rely on tradition to dethrone the reigning tradition of realism.In the second edition of The Book of Fantasy, from 1965, BioyCasares offers an illuminating postscript to the 1940 prologue (READ QUOTE 2)This allusion to the literary context of 1940s Argentina proves that the antholo- gists were keenly aware of their aesthetic agenda at the time. They believed that in order to speak of a commitment to a writer’s own material without pre- conceived ideologies or a nationalistic bent, they needed to read and write against the grain – that is, against the realist model of the late nineteenth century, transformed into telluric fiction in the twentieth.
- #13 In his lecture from 1967, Borges says