If you look back over the great successes in world literature over the last forty years or so-if you look, that is, at the books that have been read widely, in translation, throughout the world and not just in their countries of origin-you'll notice a pattern: Novel after novel after novel belongs to a genre usually known as "magical realism," full of miraculous children and ghosts who dance the bachata and cooks who can transform their feelings into soup. These novels make for splendid reading-and we will read some ten or twelve of them-but they also raise some tough questions, beginning with the term itself. "Magical realism," we must keep reminding ourselves, lest the phrase sediment itself on our tongues, is an oxymoron. How can a novel be "magical" and "realist" at the same time? How can a novel still be recognized as "realist" once it has filled its pages with hocus-pocus and hoodoo? Other questions emerge when you start reading the novels: Most of these books describe major historical events-World War II, say, or the decolonization of Nigeria-and so the question becomes: What is the relationship between magical realism and the historical novel? What happens when you try to recount history as though it were a fairy tale? And why has this genre been so popular among novelists in such widely scattered parts of the world, and especially in the world's former colonies-India, West Africa, Latin America? And how is it that magical realism has become the model for what gets to count as good literature on the world scene, as world literature proper? Why does magical realism seem like a free pass into the contemporary canon? Readings will include: Alejo Carpentier, The Lost Steps; Gunter Grass, The Tin Drum; Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude; Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children; Ben Okri, The Famished Road; Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex; and others. Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: Two essays, one shorter, one longer, totaling 15-20 pages, class attendance and participation. Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). (Post-1900)

THORNE