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Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as a Grotesque Magical Realist Text

Since the 1960s magical realism has been a significant narrative mode used by postmodernist and postcolonial authors all over the world. Disregarding the conventional classical realism and its techniques, magical realist authors have used postmodernist techniques to achieve their postcolonial aims. Their attempts to find innovative techniques have resulted in embracing the Rabelaisian aesthetics and Bakthinian concerns in their works. Grotesque realism is considered a type of magical realism. Thanks to the embrace of the magical, the improbable and the profane, grotesque magical realist texts reflect a strong regenerative carnivalesque spirit and a general worldview in popular carnival forms.The most renowned exponent of magical realism from Latin America is Gabriel García Márquez, the winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Colombian author García Márquez’s magnum opus, is generally regarded as the masterpiece of magical realism. One Hundred Years of Solitude employs carnivalesque-grotesque features and stands out for its carnivalesque spirit. To convey his message, García Márquez mostly relies on Bakhtinian concerns such as folklore, folk laughter and carnivalesque. The aim of this study is to analyze the carnivalesque-grotesque features used in the novel and their contribution to García Márquez’s meaning. Thus, this paper attempts to scrutinize One Hundred Years of Solitude as a grotesque magical realist text. Keywords: Gabriel García Márquez; One Hundred Years of Solitude; Grotesque Magical Realism; Carnivalesque-grotesque; Postcolonialism.

Keywords:

Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Grotesque Magical Realism, Carnivalesque-grotesque postcolonialism,

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