Natural Kinds, Causal Laws, Magical Concepts: an Approach to American Magical Realism”. Throughout Latin American history of ideas one can find an alienated relation towards nature, which appears as magical, indecipherable and hostile. The two main characteristics of this idea of nature are the abundance of strange species and the unpredictability of events. In this essay I will argue that the first characteristic is a natural effect of the process of inductive learning under the conditions of the discovery and conquest of America, and that the second characteristic is in turn an effect of the way how the empirical expectations with these strange species were cast in causal laws. / La historia de las ideas en América Latina está atravesada por una relación enajenada con la naturaleza, que aparece como mágica, indescifrable y hostil. Las dos características principales de esta concepción de naturaleza son la abundancia de especies extrañas y la impredecibilidad de los acontecimientos .En este ensayo argumentaré que la primera característica es un efecto natural del proceso de aprendizaje inductivo bajo condiciones del Descubrimiento y de la Conquista, y que la segunda característica es a su vez un efecto de la manera cómo las expectativas empíricas con las especies extrañas fueron cifradas en leyes causales.

No romance The Famished Road (1991), o autor nigeriano Ben Okri dá uma nova dimensão à figura da criança-espírito ou abiku, que é um motivo recorrente entre os iorubás e em diversas outras culturas da África ocidental. Como um fenômeno da crença dessas culturas, o abiku é um tema característico da narrativa oral africana, tendo sido usado também em várias obras da literatura africana de língua inglesa. Okri realiza, contudo, uma inovação ao transformar o abiku no narrador de seu romance. Uma vez que essa criatura é um in between, vivendo permanentemente na intersecção entre o mundo dos vivos e o dos mortos, a estrutura da obra literária é alterada pela realidade vista pelos seus olhos. A sua visão é composta pelas imagens da simultaneidade entre esses mundos. Na construção de seu romance, Okri tenta traduzir essa visão para um público leitor ocidental, utilizando ao mesmo tempo paradigmas da oralidade africana e da literatura ocidental. O romance se coloca, assim, num espaço de transição entre a cultura africana e a ocidental. São utilizados métodos e estratégias narrativas de ambas as tradições e o próprio fenômeno do abiku é investido por outras concepções mais ocidentais a respeito da ressurreição da alma. O objetivo desta dissertação é mostrar, de acordo com uma perspectiva crítica pós-colonial, como esse romance se constrói como uma obra híbrida entre os modos de se perceber e de se retratar a realidade característicos de cada uma dessas culturas. / In the novel The Famished Road (1991) Nigerian author Ben Okri gives a new dimension to the spirit child or abiku\'s image, which is a recurrent motif among the Yoruba and many other cultures from West Africa. The abiku is a characteristic subject of the African oral narrative and is also present in some African literature in English as the abiku is part of the belief of those cultures. However, Okri undertakes an innovation, turning the abiku into the narrator of his novel. Since this creature is an in between, living permanently in the intersection between the world of the living and the world of the dead, the structure of the literary work is altered by the reality as it is seen through his eyes. His vision is made up by the simultaneous images of those two worlds. In the construction of his novel, Okri tries to translate this vision to a Western reading audience, using paradigms from both the African orality and Western literature. Thus, the novel is placed in a transitional space between African and Western cultures. Narrative methods and strategies from both traditions are used and the abiku phenomenon itself is invested by other more Western conceptions about the soul\'s resurrection. This dissertation aims to reveal from a postcolonial theoretical perspective how this novel is constructed as a hybrid work between the modes of perceiving and depicting reality characteristic of each one of these cultures.

The aim of this Diploma Thesis is to bring attention to the resemblance between the work of one of the most important Hispanic American authors of 20th century, the Mexican Juan Rulfo, and his less well-known Chilean colleague, María Luisa Bombal. Even though the work of these writers has often been associated with the beginnings of the so-called Magical Realism, so far literary critics have not studied the parallelism in their poetics in detail. This work observes the deviation of these authors from the type of literature dominant in their time, and their effort to renovate it. Furthermore, it concerns the similarity in the approach to death in their work; it pays attention to the influence of the Nordic literature on their literary production. Another part of this work is dedicated to the parallels between the character of Susana San Juan from Rulfoˈs Pedro Páramo and Bombalˈs female characters. In addition to that, the work reflects the personal relationship between the authors in question.

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This thesis represents a partial translation of the short story collection Omedetō by Kawakami Hiromi. Published in 2000, the collection contains twelve short stories, each narrating an intimate relationship between two people. It was favorably received by the literary world and was republished twice, in 2003 and 2007. My critical introduction provides context to Omedetō by discussing Kawakami’s biography and writing style, and the book’s reception in Japan. I also make note of my translation methods, domestication and dynamic equivalence, and provide examples of how I translated onomatopoeia. Finally, I give historical background to Japanese intimacy at the turn of the millennium and argue that each story serves as a commentary on Japanese modern intimacy, which Kawakami defines as a combination of physical and emotional closeness or a yearning for such.

This thesis analyzes not only the book itself but also the development and transformation of main characters of the novel The House of the Spirits written by Chilean author Isabel Allende. The work deals with an introduction period of the Spanish-American fiction of the twentieth century, with emphasis on magic realism and related spirituality and historical events of the 20th century Chile. The text also focuses on the general theory of characters and plot outlines and structure of the novel. Furthermore, these findings are applied to the fictional character of this work. The conclusion summarizes the results of the investigation carried out and refuted the thesis of literature Isabell Allende. It is concluded that House of the Spirits clearly belongs to the literature of Latin American post - boom and it means much more than just a simple entertaining reading.

Parfois posées en héritières du fantastique du dix-neuvième siècle, les écritures singulières des auteurs postcoloniaux exploitant les ressorts du surnaturel sont souvent cataloguées sous l’étiquette homogénéisante de « réalisme magique ». L'intérêt du rappro­chement des œuvres de René Depestre, Rachid Boudjedra et Ben Okri est de pouvoir interroger ces filiations à partir de leur textualisation de la figure du double. Ces littératures, adoptant une posture nouvelle face à son traitement et à son évolution, s'éloignent des écritures fantastiques occidentales. Elles s'en distinguent par l’exploitation de personnages hybrides, dont la posture face au double est conditionnée par cette hybridité-même, une conséquence inéluctable de l'Histoire. Ces auteurs postcoloniaux explorent des ethnoscapes inédits et développent une écriture résolument moderne fondée sur une hybridation générique qui contribue à revivifier le roman à l'occidentale. Leurs poétiques hybrides génèrent ainsi un genre original où le double, loin d’être une simple figure, est une clé pour aborder ces textes aux imaginaires multiples qui jettent de nouvelles bases pour une herméneutique littéraire. / The postcolonial authors who use the supernatural have sometimes been qualified as the heirs of Nineteenth Century fantastic literature, and are often categorized under the homogenizing label of “magical realism”. The relevance of the parallels between the works of René Depestre, Rachid Boudjedra and Ben Okri is apparent when interrogating these filiations through their textualisation of the figure of the Double. This writing confronts the figure's appearance and evolution with a novel posture, and has developed a varied approach different from that of Western fantastic literature. They set themselves apart by their usage of hybrid characters, whose attitude when facing the Double is conditioned by their hybridity; an inescapable consequence of history. The authors explore original ethnoscapes and have developed a thoroughly modern writing built on a generic hybridity, contributing to the revitalization of the Western novel. These hybrid poetics have generated an original genre in which the double, far from it’s basic characterization, represents a key when approaching the multi-facetted imaginations of these works, laying new groundwork for literary interpretation.

Las relaciones literarias entre la cultura latinoamericana y la japonesa no han disfrutado del desarrollo que han tenido los estudios comparatistas centrados en los intercambios de Occidente con Japón. Este estudio pretende incidir en la influencia del realismo mágico literario latinoamericano en Japón a través de momentos puntuales en la escritura de K. Oé (M/T y la historia de las maravillas del bosque) y H. Murakami (Kafka en la orilla, 1Q84). A pesar de que este último autor sí ha sido analizado desde los postulados del realismo mágico, aquí discutimos sus resultados interpretativos. Más bien lo adscribimos al ámbito de la literatura fantástica, sin renunciar al análisis de sus mundos con modelos ficcionales inspirados en la física cuántica, por lo que aplicamos a sus novelas el principio de incertidumbre y las consecuencias de la no-localidad y de la dualidad 'onda-partícula'. En cuanto a K. Oé, nos aproximamos a su novela desde los presupuestos de la llamada «ética cuántica» para justificar cómo el realismo mágico coincide en ciertas intuiciones con lo descrito por la física cuántica. Desde esa perspectiva, lo inverosímil (bajo el paradigma newtoniano) se torna (en el paradigma cuántico) verosímil, y en el proceso se amplía el concepto de realismo.