Life is Magical
Lessons on Magical Realism Literature and Life
I recently took a course about the genre of Magical Realism. It was my last class besides my thesis in the pursuit of my MFA degree in writing, and it wasn’t what I expected.
Going into the class, I thought Urban Fantasy was a type of Magical Realism, but I found out that it isn’t. They are two completely different things.
It’s hard to exactly pinpoint what Magical Realism is and isn’t but I’ll do my best here to give you an idea.
First of all, the magic takes place in a mundane, or real-world setting. Like me, you might be thinking, Urban Fantasy has a real-world setting with magical elements, so what’s the difference?
In Magical Realism, the setting is mundane and the magical element is just part of the story. It might be a tiny ball of light that holds the universe like Jorge Luis Borges's story, The Aleph. Or it might be A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, the story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The stories are about ordinary people living ordinary lives with a magical element that everyone accepts as part of life. The mundane setting is what makes the magic a believable part of the story.
In Urban Fantasy, the story is all about the magic. It’s about vampires, werewolves, witches, elves, fairies, or other…