Reading Magic Realism

This six-week course will begin by exploring the development of Magic Realism in Latin America with selected readings and discussion. In the 1970s and 1980s,the work of the late Nobel Laureate author Gabriel García Márquez was representative of a new genre of speculative fiction known as Realismo Mágico (Magic Realism). Master of the short story as well as the novel, Márquez, along with his Latin American contemporaries, authors such as Jorge Luís Borges and Julio Cortázar, created literary worlds where the lines between reality and imagination crossed in the most unusual fashion. The class will also read and explore the Márquez masterwork One Hundred Years of Solitude.