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Abstract

With growing recognition of the unreliability of political rhetoric, Bowers considers the sub-genre of magical realist satire in relation to World Literature. Regarding magical realist satire as a cross-genre of menippean satire and magical realism, Bowers responds to the relative lack of critical attention to satirical elements of magical realism, despite the overtly political aspects of many magical realist texts. In examination of the representation of political events in a diversity of seminal magical realist novels, Bowers recognizes the dark side of what binds World Literature and texts of magical realist satire together. This chapter reveals that satirical magical realism shares a reliance with World Literature upon a balance of the global and general and local and specific, within their imaginative responses to the world.

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Bowers, M.A. (2020). Outrageous Humor: Satirical Magical Realism. In: Perez, R., Chevalier, V. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Magical Realism in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39835-4_25

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