ISABEL ALLENDE/ SOR JUANA INES

Isabel Allende/ Sor Juana Ines

Isabel Allende/ Sor Juana Ines

Isabel Allende born in Lima, Peru, her Chilean diplomat father and her mother divorced and she lived with her mother and grandparents. She worked first as a secretary and then as a journalist in print, on television and in movie documentaries. Isabel Allende's work is much inspired by Sor Juana de la cruz centered on feddom of women. After the overthrow and assassination in 1973 of her uncle, Salvador Allende, president of Chile, Isabel Allende and her husband and children left for safety in Venezuela.

A literary mode rather than a distinguishable genre, magical realism aims to seize the paradox of the union of opposites.  For instance, it challenges polar opposites like life and death and the pre-colonial past versus the post-industrial present.  Magical realism is characterized by two conflicting perspectives, one based on a rational view of reality and the other on the acceptance of the supernatural as prosaic reality.  Magical realism differs from pure fantasy primarily because it is set in a normal, modern world with authentic descriptions of humans and society.  According to Angel Flores, magical realism involves the fusion of the real and the fantastic, or as he claims, "an amalgamation of realism and fantasy".  The presence of the supernatural in magical realism is often connected to the primeval or "magicalí Indian mentality, which exists in conjunction with European rationality.  According to Ray Verzasconi, as well as other critics, magical realism is "an expression of the New World reality which at once combines the rational elements of the European super-civilization, and the irrational elements of a primitive America."  (Fraser, Pp. 6)Gonzalez Echchevarria believes that magical realism offers a world view that is not based on natural or physical laws or objective reality.  However, the fictional world is not separated from reality either.

Specifically, magical realism is illustrated in the inharmonious arenas of such opposites as urban and rural, and Western and indigenous.  The plots of magical realist works involve issues of borders, mixing, and change.  Authors establish these plots to reveal a crucial purpose of magical realism:  a more deep and true reality than conventional realist techniques would illustrate.

She refers to the lack of clear opinions about the accuracy of events and the credibility of the world views expressed by the characters in the text.  This technique promotes acceptance in magical realism.  In magical realism, the simple act of explaining the supernatural would eradicate its position of equality regarding a person's conventional view of reality.  Because it would then be less valid, the supernatural world would be discarded as false testimony.In magical realism, the supernatural is not displayed as questionable.  While the reader realizes that the rational and irrational are opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not disconcerted because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of the narrator and characters in the fictional world. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a seventeenth-century Mexican nun, is one of the most compelling figures of her ...