1 - Telling Tales

Summary

The theorists and writers who have tried to define and categorise magical realism have been keen to distinguish the mode of writing from fairy tales and other well-known vehicles for the fantastic and miraculous. Flores (1995, 115–16) writes: ‘the practitioners of magical realism cling to reality as if to prevent ‘literature’ from getting in their way, as if to prevent their myth from flying off, as in fairy tale to supernatural realms'. Leal likewise strives to separate magical realism from the common fantastical genres: ‘magical realism cannot be identified either with fantastic literature or with psychological literature, or with the surrealist or hermetic literature that Ortega describes’. This eagerness to distinguish magical realism or its counterparts from fairy story and fantasy emerges from a literary snobbishness, which views these stories as childish or not worthy of serious attention; despite this supercilious attitude, or perhaps because of it, fairy stories have always had associations with subversion against dominating cultures. The insistent separation of magical realism from fairy tales also, however, reflects that readers have a quite distinct response to magical realist texts. This separation is especially pertinent for an understanding of where Ovid's poem lies with regards to the modern movement, for his task in the Metamorphoses is in many ways very similar to that of the Grimm brothers and Hans Christian Andersen who all recast old stories in new forms and settings.