Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Magical Realism As A Means Of Expressing Cultural Disjunction In Alejo Carpentier's 'El Reino De Este Mundo', Ryan Saul Cunningham

Student Research Symposium

Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier's 1949 novel El reino de este mundo is considered to be a key work in the development of the magical realist narrative idiom. The narrative includes instances of the fantastic -- including ghosts and animal metamorphoses -- that the novel's Afro-Caribbean characters accept as factual. In keeping with his suggestions that "the entire history of America [is] a chronicle of the marvelous real," Carpentier supposes that these elements elucidate an "authentic" New World mode of perception. However, the novel's narrative structure belies the author's objective. The concurrent presentation of both non-Western/magical and Western/disenchanted cultural paradigms prevents …