English 405G: Surrealism, Magic Realism, and the Neo-Fantastic                                              

This seminar will examine the [neo-]fantastic and its relation to surrealism and magic realism in selected 20th century texts, beginning with Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and the ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges. Topics will include the surrealist short story (Julio Cortazar),  marvellous realism (Alejo Carpentier), two conceptions of magic realism (Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende), and fantasy and deconstruction (Timothy Findley). Attention will also be given to  relevant critical writings, particularly Todorov’s The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre and its critics, and Monleón’s A Specter is Haunting Europe: A Sociological Approach to the Fantastic.

Texts:
Allende, Isabel                    The House of Spirits                   Bantam
Borges, Jorge                      Labyrinths                                  New Directions
Carpentier, Alejo                The Kingdom of this World         Noonday Press
Cortazar, Julio                    Blow-Up and Other Stories         Pantheon
Findley, Timothy                Not Wanted on the Voyage          Penguin
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel    One Hundred Years of Solitude    Harper Perennial
Kafka, Franz                     The Metamorphosis                      Bantam

Course package: Magic Realism, Surrealism, and the Neo-Fantastic  (UWO Bookstore):  Prologue to The Kingdom of this World (Carpentier);  short stories including  “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” (Garcia Marquez), “Chac Mool” (Fuentes), “Visitation” (Griggs); and Todorov, “Definition of the Fantastic.”.