Bloomsbury Academic Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in Latin America

Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in Latin America rethinks the rise and fall of magical realism in Latin America in the light of the cultural history of the emotions, and in conversation with contemporary theories of the affects. It explores how twentieth-century magical realist narrative reimagines public and collective forms of feeling, in particular the colonial history of wonder in the wake of the voyages to the New World. Magical Realism and the History of the Emotions in Latin America argues that this reconceptualization of magical realism also invites a new reading of its marked devaluation in contemporary Latin American literature, suggesting that this turning point responds to major changes in the uses and circulation of forms of emotional intensity in the present. Review 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, MercedContiene, 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"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 Ameri