University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
"Believe in these things": magical realism's postmodern use of religious language
Abstract
dc:description.abstractMagical 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
thesis:*- Grantor dc:publisher
- University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
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- Duncan, Laura
- Contributors dc:contributor
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- Guy, Matthew W.
- Balazs, Thomas P.; Sligh, Charles L.
- College of Arts and Sciences
Subjects
dc:subject × 2Rights
dc:rights- Language dc:language
- English, eng
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Repository record dc:identifier
- https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/165
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1306