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Gabriel García Márquez and Ovid: Magical and Monstrous Realities
Author(s): Lorna Robinson (Author)
- Publisher: Tamesis Books
- Publication Date: 17 Jan. 2013
- Language: English
- Print length: 198 pages
- ISBN-10: 1855662493
- ISBN-13: 9781855662490
Book Description
This book explores the ways in which Ovid’s poem, Metamorphoses, and Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, use magical devices to construct their literary realities. This book explores the ways in which Ovid’s poem, Metamorphoses, and Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, use magical devices to construct their literary realities. The study examines in detail the similarities and differences of each author’s style and investigates the impact of politics and culture upon the magical and frequently brutal realities the two authors create in their works. Ultimately the book is interested in the use of magical elements by authors in political climates where freedoms are being restricted, and by using magical realism to explore Ovid’s Metamorphoses, it is able to illuminate aspects of the regime of emperor Augustus and the world of Ovid and demonstrate their closeness to that of García Márquez’s Colombia. Lorna Robinson holds a PhD in Classics from University College London. She is the author of Cave Canem: A Miscellany of Latin Words and Phrases and the essay ‘The Golden Age in Metamorphoses’ and ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ in A Companion to Magical Realism (Tamesis, 2005).
Editorial Reviews
Review
Throughout the analysis Robinson skilfully interweaves formalist and cultural critiques. Her treatment of the relationship between magical realism and post-colonialism in Cien años is extensive and interesting. Even more intriguing is her employment of a magical realist reading to unearth subtle traces of political and social conflicts in Metamorphoses … Robinson makes a strong case for Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a work of magical realism avant la lettre and for the wider use of this approach to other earlier works not conventionally included in the magical realist canon. ― BULLETIN OF SPANISH STUDIES
