Nightingale, Elizabeth Geneviève; (2022) An Infinite Succession of Steps: Magical Realism's Prehistory. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis examines the presence of magical-realist literature in pre-1935 Europe, demonstrating a prehistory that situates magical realism in dialogue with the development of global literature. Although the theoretical study of magical realism is substantial and wide- ranging, it is limited by the critical convention that considers the mode to have begun in Latin America in the 1950s, and often treats Gabriel García Márquez as its originator: texts emerging from outside of this context are excluded from critical discussion, even where they comply with all formal definitions of the mode. My thesis interrogates this convention, which I view as producing an untenable internal contradiction. The texts I study here evince the presence of magical-realist technique pre-dating the mode’s supposed inception, suggesting an unexamined prehistory that rewards study. First I trace the origins of the ‘Americanist’ convention through the history of the Latin American crisis of national identity, then explore how this convention was replicated in academic discourse, which I argue would benefit from dispensing with context-based exclusions. In Part II, I read Alfred Kubin’s The Other Side and Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as works of magical realism, arguing that both use the mode to explore the position of the individual in relation to society. Part III develops this theme with Nikolai Gogol’s ‘The Nose’ and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Heart of a Dog, which are placed in conversation with Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ and Andrei Bely’s Petersburg, to demonstrate how they give magical- realist treatment to the dilemma of the individual within the social conditions of the Petersburg urban landscape. Finally I bring my own research into contact with existing magical-realist academia through a comparative study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading and Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, showing Márquez’s text as one that revolutionises as well as participates in magical realism.

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