A “SUPERIOR MAGIC”: LITERARY POLITICS AND THE RISE OF THE FANTASTIC IN LATIN AMERICAN FICTION

PABLO BRESCIA

History of Fantastic Literature

Colonial Era• Pre-Hispanic cosmogonies/belief systems• European colonizers mix of Medieval moral grounding and

Renaissance enterprising

Nineteenth Century• Fantastic becomes codified but still only on the margins of literary world• Realist and Naturalist novel• Regional fiction1930-1950 Fantastic

BORGES’ READING CODE

INTERNATIONALOPEN

HEDONISTIC

“The fact that an Argentine can write about a German version of a Russian translation of stories imagined in

Turkistan speaks about the superior magic of these tales. It emphasizes the multiplicity of time and space

and is almost an invitation to metaphysics”

-- Jorge Luis Borges, August 1926, in the newspaper La Prensa, Borges reviewed the anthology Stories from Turkistan