The Practice and Significance of Magical Realism in Selected African Novels
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2020-06
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Abstract
This study entitled The Practice and Significance of Magical Realism in Selected African Novels
attempts to read different African novels through the lens of magical realism. Magical realism,
introduced to the realm of literature mostly with Latin American novels and gaining worldwide
recognition with postcolonial literary works, has been a focal point of different scholarly studies.
In Africa, Ben Okri‘s Famished Road has been studied by many for its skilful employment of the
technique. The motivation behind taking up this topic is to fill the research gap in reading
different novels from different regions of Africa in one volume and to be able to observe the
trend in the practice and significance of using magical realism. In doing so, the paper aims to
compare and contrast how different novelists from different contexts in Africa have applied the
different features that magical realism is known for. After establishing the practices of the usage
in different regions, the study attempts to identify the drive that motivates novelists to use
magical realism and it also tries to highlight the issues raised through the magical realist
approach. Five novels have been chosen for this study namely; The Heart of Redness, The
Bleeding of the Stone, Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez, Woman of the Aeroplanes and Wizard of
the Crow. To read these novels, a theoretical framework is formed using magical realism‘s
different features theorized by different critics. The practices and significances of the use of
magical realism in these novels are studied comparatively in order to show how and why the
approach is used in different contexts. In addition, the paper attempts to identify if there are any
differences or similarities among different traditional contexts in Africa in the employment of
magical realism and if the issues raised through it have commonalities. The fact that the novels
are chosen from South, North, East, West and Central Africa and that they are studied
comparatively in one thesis could be taken as a new contribution in showing expressions of
magical realism in different backgrounds. The study concludes that different novelists in
different parts of Africa have used magical realism associating it with their own contexts,
connecting it with their respective cultural backgrounds, shared historical accounts, commenting
on existing economic, social and political situations.
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The Heart of Redness, The Bleeding of the Stone, Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez, Woman of the Aeroplanes and Wizard of the Crow.