Committee Chair

Guy, Matthew W.

Committee Member

Balazs, Thomas P.; Sligh, Charles L.

Department

Dept. of English

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Magical realism has expanded from a genre squarely located within postcolonialism to one that includes many non-colonial, Western writers such as Karen Russell and Helen Oyeyemi. Using Russell’s Swamplandia!, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl as representative texts, this thesis extends Frederic Jameson’s theory of “effacement” and Jean-François Lyotard’s “postmodern condition” to investigate the spread of the magical realist genre and techniques beyond its postcolonial beginnings and into a postmodern means to insert an element of the unknown back into a scientifically bound, prosaic reality. These magical Realist authors create their effects largely by using the trappings of religions, specifically its language, symbols, and mindsets. Jameson and Lyotard, along with Brian McHale, and critics Lois Parkinson Zamora, Wendy B. Faris, and Amaryll Chanady, provide insightful ideas, theories, and platforms with which to critically study the origin and implications of this shift in the genre.

Degree

M. A.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts.

Date

5-2015

Subject

Magical realism (Literature)

Name

Russell, Karen, 1981- -- Criticism and interpretation; Rushdie, Salman, 1947- -- Criticism and interpretation; Oyeyemi, Helen -- Criticism and interpretation

Keyword

magical realism; religion; postmodernism

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

v, 45 leaves

Language

English

Rights

https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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