Notes on Translations
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Worldly Wonder
Part I: Wonder in the Colonial Heart
Chapter: One: The Intermittence of the Marvelous
Chapter Two: Columbus’s First Journal and the Materiality of the
Emotions
Chapter Three: Colonial Chronicles as Archives of Feelings
Part II: The Afterlives of Feelings
Chapter Four: Alejo Carpentier’s lo real maravilloso americano and
the Colonial History of Wonder
Chapter Five: The Afterlives of Feelings: Wonder as Palimpsest in
Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad
Chapter Six: In the Graveyards of Magical Realism: The Dissafection
of the Marvelous and César Aira’s El mago
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Jerónimo Arellano is assistant professor of Latin American literature and culture at Brandeis University
In this seminal work Arellano reevaluates the history and
transmission of wonder in Latin American literature. His treatment
is chronological: he starts with early chronicles of the New World,
which he classifies as the first manifestations of wonder, and
concludes with the relevance of wonder in contemporary magical
realist narratives. Throughout the book, Arellano provides
alternative readings of canonical texts, looking at them through
the lens of affectivity and emotion, and he examines the cultural
history of wonder and the practice of collecting, which he connects
to the 16th-century Wunderkammer (cabinet of curiosities).
Challenging the notion that postcolonial magical realist writers
simply reproduce the discourse and motifs of colonial chronicles,
the author demonstrates how texts dialogue with one another through
time and space, reconceptualizing the motif of what he calls 'the
marvelous-as-ordinary.' Through this exploration, Arellano delves
into the discrepancies surrounding the definition, analysis, and
evolution of magical realism in the literary history of Latin
America. Overall, this is an excellent scholarly contribution that
does not limit itself to regional contexts and instead traces
transcultural and transnational connections in the study and
reevaluation of the Latin American chronicle and magical realist
narratives. Summing Up: Essential. Graduate students, researchers,
faculty.
*CHOICE*
This study sheds a novel light on an already extensively researched
topic. The argument is daring, subtle and remains engaging
throughout the book.
*Forum For Modern Language Studies*
Contiene, por un lado, una clarificadora discusión de la difícil y,
a menudo, abstrusa literatura sobre el binario emoción/afecto. Es
en mi opinión, además, una de las más convincentes demostraciones
de la productividad del llamdo 'giro afectivo' en el pensamiento
crítico latinoamericano contemporáneo. Su tratamiento de las
transformaciones epocales pre-modernas, modernas y post-modernas de
la maravilla como estructura de sentimiento es extraordinariamente
valioso. . . .un acercamiento pionero a la maravilla en el marco de
la cuestión del afecto y las emociones en la historia de América
Latina.
[[Magical Realism in the History of the Emotions] includes, among
other features, an illuminating discussion of the challenging,
often abstruse, literature on the binary affect/emotion. In my
view, this book is also one of the most convincing demonstrations
of the productivity of the so-called 'affective turn' in Latin
Americanist critical thought. Its examination of the pre-modern,
modern, and post-modern epochal transformations of the marvelous as
a structure of feeling is extraordinarily valuable. . . A
ground-breaking approach to the marvelous in the context of the
question of affect and emotion in the history of Latin
America.]
*Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana*
Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in Latin America
makes a valuable contribution to a crowded area of research by
approaching magical realism through affect studies, the history of
the emotions, and new materialist studies ( Jane Bennett, Bill
Brown). Jerónimo Arellano’s opposing perspectives elicit surprising
new insights about works that have been analyzed extensively, such
as Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years
of Solitude) and Alejo Carpentier’s Los pasos perdidos (The Lost
Steps)…. Indeed, Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in
Latin America has critical ambitions that far surpass those of a
new study on magical realism; it is more aptly characterized as a
sketch toward a new transatlantic literary and cultural history of
wonder in modernity from the discovery and invasion of the New
World to the present…. Impeccably researched in all areas of
expertise, Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in Latin
America is a sophisticated study that models the kinds of
innovative readings that new emotions-based and object-oriented
theories may facilitate in Latin American literary and cultural
studies.
*Modern Language Quarterly*
Arellano’s brilliant study recasts the genealogy of the marvelous
ordinary in Latin American literature. It provides a fresh, new
look at a seemingly overanalyzed literary mode, Magical Realism, by
contextualizing it with contemporary theories of affect, the
cultural history of wonder, the sociality of emotions, as well as
the changing structures of feeling and material practices. This
book reveals a new history of wonder from the margins of the
colonial/modern world-system, by revisiting the historical
relationship—in both temporal and spatial terms—among magical
realist narratives’ expression of wonder and those of the early
modern Wunderkammer (cabinet of wonder) and the chronicles of the
New World.
*Ignacio López-Calvo, University of California, Merced, editor of
Magical Realism (Critical Insights)*
Jerónimo Arellano’s refreshing study is a subtle, thoughtful and
stimulating reassessment of Latin American literary history. Using
notions of both affectivity and emotion, Arellano sheds new light
on the wonder discourse of the ‘New World’ and comprehensively
punctures and problematizes the common assumption that modern
Magical Realist writing is essentially rooted in traditional
versions of such a discourse.
*Philip Swanson, Hughes Professor of Spanish, University of
Sheffield*
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