Sublime Elements in Of Love and Other Demons
The book Of Love and Other Demons (1994), written by the Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, has more characteristics of sublime literature than of magical realist literature. Magical Realism and the sublime are so closely related that distinguishing between the two is hard. They are more closely related than magical realism and the fantastic.
Of Love and Other Demons has elements of magical realism. Of all the magical elements, the most important and the most obvious is the dream that is shared by both Sierva and Delaura before they meet. The long red hair of Sierva is an example of a magic realist element that is hidden. The death of Father Aquino and other mysterious
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they also partake of a dreamlike quality which aligns them with a host of other magical realist devices and motifs" (Theim 237). This device is also similar to Weiskel's third phase of the sublime, the reactive phase (qtd in Sandner 52). During this time, "the mind recovers the balance of outer and inner by constituting a fresh relation between itself and the object" (qtd. in Sandner 52).
Another way in which the story may correspond with the sublime is Sierva's long red hair that had not been cut from the day she was born until the end of her excorcism. Wordsworth says, about the sublime, "Even in the scenes drawn from ordinary life, [the authors] would throw over them a certain coloring of the imagination" (qtd. in Sander 60). This effect is exactly what Marquez does with Sierva's hair. He alluded that there may be something supernatural about it. "The sublime affirm[s] a spiritual dimension to fantasy and explores, through fantastic images, the meaning and existence of spirit" (Sandner 145). Transformation, another sublime characteristic, is used to show how one's perception of something changes (qtd in Sandner 51). Instead of being just hair, it was a promise to Dominga's god. Defamiliarization, which is a characteristic of both the sublime and magical realism (Simpkins 150), is used in Of Love and Other Demons. It focuses one's attention on something, such as hair, that he or she would normally think nothing
Our human species is dated back to more than 200,000 years ago, now if we can attain a significant lesson that our ancestors have passed down to us, it would definitely be to keep learning and writing. Many past generations and societies have been destroyed by diseases, famine, and due to their lack of knowledge and their capability to reason. Considering the Egyptians were very intelligent, few of their inventions that we still use till this day are geometry, the pen, and papyrus, which is used as paper. But even so, they were wiped out by the thousands from diseases. However, humans have yet to reach their highest potential but by attaining knowledge through literature, one can endure lessons from the past without having to experience it.
Through viewing Big Fish, by Tim Burton and reading both of Marquez’s stories (Handsomest Drowned Man In The World and A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings), it becomes apparent that while both novels vary greatly in plot and storyline, they are also both centered around the concept of magical realism. For example, Big Fish is a story about a young mAn who visits his dying father, but throughout the story, is introduced to various ‘magical’ entities, which introduce an almost fantasy-like theme to the story. In Marquez’s stories, one is about a handsome drowned man and the other is about a dirty, raggedy angel. We are similarly shown this sense of an ordinary reality, with a certain twinge of magic/fantasy. So while this film and these novels are completely different in the terms of context and storyline, they share these elements of fantasy, that seamlessly blend together to create a realistic, yet magical atmosphere that provides the reader with a unique and capturing experience.
In "The Demon Lover," by Elizabeth Bowen, Kathleen Drover returns to London from her house in the country in order to gather some things that she and her husband had abandoned during the bombings of the war. It is a humid, rainy day in late August and her once familiar street is now mostly deserted. The caretaker of her house is supposed to be out of town for a week and her arrival is assumed unknown. Mrs. Drover enters the old musty house and discovers a letter addressed to herself and it is marked with the present date. Curious to know if the caretaker is back in town and a little annoyed by the letter seeming to have no urgency in being mailed to her, she proceeds upstairs to her old bedroom to read it. In utter shock and complete
To begin, we will look at the ideals and influences that led to the formation of surrealist ideals,
All three versions of “The Demon Lover has the same common messages: to be careful in trust, be careful of the vows you make, and that the decisions of the young often come back around negatively. All three pieces exemplify these messages heavily. Of all of the works maintaining these themes, Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” displays these messages the most vehemently. Bowen’s version of “The Demon Lover” take on the principles of Harris’ “The Demon Lover” and makes the ideals more noticeable to the novice reader.
During this class, I have learned much that I was surprised of some of the information that was delivered. While I slightly knew what I might have expected to see during the course, the concepts that were introduction were fascinating and I was shocked that I didn’t know a few beforehand. One such important concept was the idea of the sublime.
Magical realism is clearly present throughout Gabriel-Garcia Marquez's novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Magical realism is the juxtaposition of realism with fantastic, mythic, and magical elements. A secondary trait was the characteristic attitude of narrators toward the subject matter: they frequently appeared to accept events contrary to the usual operating laws of the universe as natural, even unremarkable. Though the tellers of astonishing tales, they themselves expressed little or no surprise.
While love is not frequently mentioned in the poem the Inferno, it always has a presence on the back of the reader’s mind. The most surprising appearance of love comes at the gates of hell. This is where Dante learns that this place of punishment has been created from “Primal Love”. Dante displayed hell as being birthed from “the primal love”, or the Holy Spirit. Though those who do not believe the justice of eternal punishment are all less inclined to regard it as a byproduct of God’s love. In this essay I will reveal how hell is the result of God’s loving character, and how it was indeed created from love.
Latin American literature is perhaps best known for its use of magical realism, a literary mode where the fantastical is seamlessly blended with the ordinary, creating a sort of enhanced reality. Though magical realism is practiced by authors from other cultures, the works of authors Salman Rushdie and Toni Morrison, for example, are notable examples of non-Latin works in which magical realism has been used to both great effect and great celebration, it is in the works of Latin American authors where the style has flourished and made its mark on the literary world. Yet even in Latin American works we can find many different kinds of magical realism, all used to achieve a different end. In the works of the Cuban poet and novelist
The Sacred Realm is a theme of art that involves the concept of aspects that cannot be seen but can only be brought to existence through faith by viewing a piece of art work. This faith is usually in form of a sacred realm. It’s vital to understand that this theme cannot be viewed by the naked eye. For instance, the religious images in the visual art are employed to bring about the opinions and beliefs of the individuals who are in faith of the specific religion and this is reached by provision of abstract ideas with images thru the work of art. Therefore, the Sacred Realm theme of art explains in a virtual way the reason and purpose behind the existence of certain aspects of nature such as religion
Identical to the Sublime's characteristic of accumulation in "The Circular Ruins" is Magical Realism's characteristic of an extensive
The controversy surrounding Magical Realism makes the classification of what is and what is not Magical Realism very difficult. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a famous Latin American author, has written many pieces of what is generally conceived to be Magical Realism. Marqez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" fulfills every characteristic of Magical Realism..
How can a poem still have rhythm without rhyme? There are certain tools of rhythm that
Latin author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has written many short stories and novels that are considered to be Magical Realism. Some of these works are "The Ghosts of August," One Hundred Years of Solitude," "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," and "Light Is Like Water." In "Light Is Like Water" (December 1978), the use of various fantastic elements along with the realist elements is what defines this story as Magical Realism.
This paper takes two steps to have a brief view on The Demon Lover, from New Historicist point of view.