ENGL 4522

Magical Realism: Ireland and the Postcolonial World

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2014-2015 Catalog.

This course will study transnational cross-pollinations among Irish, Latin American, Indian, and Caribbean writers who transgress the boundaries between the enchantment of fantasy and the seeming rationality of the material world. What role do ghosts, miracles, and wondrous transformations play in the social and aesthetic imagination of nations emerging from colonial oppression? Ireland will form our central case study: Irish writers since the 1940s have drawn on the folk legacy of the Celtic Revival while mixing in new inspiration from the hybrid modes of authors such as Borges and Rushdie. By tracing a line of influence that runs from Joyce to García Márquez to Anne Enright, we will map the circulation of the uncanny and the uncontainable across the crumbling borders of the contemporary globe.

Distribution Category (LA-AS)

When Offered Spring.

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