Revelations: Spirituality as Privileged Perspectivism in Magical Realist Distortions

Author

Isabella Scala-Kazanecki, CUNY City CollegeFollow

Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Department

English

First Advisor

Lyn DiIorio

Second Advisor

Robert Higney

Third Advisor

Andras Kisery

Keywords

Magical Realism, Literary Fiction, Fiction, Spirituality, Religion, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Voodoo, Latin America, Couture, Fashion, Saint George, Salman Rushdie, Francine Prose, Alejo Carpentier

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of spiritual beliefs in the literary mode now known as magical realism in Cuban Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World (1949), Indian-Born British and American Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), and a lesser-known novel, Household Saints (1981) by Francine Prose, an American writer. The Kingdom of This World, itself the originator of the mode of magical realism, has allowed me to conclude with Carpentier that magical realism arises from “privileged revelations,” as he notes in the preface to his seminal book. But these revelations in magical realism are not necessarily always of the divine. More often they are of the mundane. This sense of the heightening of reality to the point where it could be interpreted as magical or “marvelous,” as per Carpentier’s first naming of the form as lo real maravilloso or “the marvelous real,” often happens when characters notice something they had never seen before in a context that is natural. Whether they are highly in tune with or terribly estranged from their ethnic, racial, communal, and traditional identities and beliefs, characters in these books are conduits for these privileged revelations. Mackandal and Soliman in The Kingdom of this World, Farishta and Chamcha in The Satanic Verses, and Theresa in Household Saints, are all such characters. Consequently, in all three novels, the question of divine manifestation and belief can often be reduced to perspective. Classic theorizations by Maggie Ann Bowers, Wendy Faris and Lois Parkinson Zamora, which focus on the way magical realism blurs boundaries between many binary oppositions, as well as more contemporary approaches by Lyn Di Iorio Sandín and Caroline Rody, focusing on ethnicity, race, and trauma, will further this analysis. An account of folkloric beliefs in magic surrounding the Catholic Saint George and a dissection of contemporary fashion practices by Daniel Roseberry for the French haute couture house of Schiaparelli will bracket the examination of this theme in literature as both contemporary and timeless.

Recommended Citation

Scala-Kazanecki, Isabella, "Revelations: Spirituality as Privileged Perspectivism in Magical Realist Distortions" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1211