>>Genre distinctions are important here. The content of Job, _Odyssey_,_Bleak House_ and _Lord of the Ring_ may consist of narrated events that did not "really" happen, but only the last can usefully be considered
fantasy, the generic radical of which is shared agreement between story-teller and reader that the events narrated not only did not occur but occurred in a world that could not exist. Job asserts its reality on
both a narrative and a theological basis, the Odyssey is a story the audience already knows "really" happened (and it is told by the Muse to the poet, with the audience listening in, and _Bleak House_ is presented
as a fiction but consistent with the 'real world." Dickens even adds a note affirming that spontaneous combustion _could_ happen. But in the Ring trilogy part of the very substance is the shared knowledge of
writer and reader that this is an imaginary world not merely a fictional world. I suppose "magical realism" is yet another genre of fiction, but I don't know much about it.>>
Ahh, the modernist episteme and those who like to rehearse it (Carrol namely). The problem is, we live in a world where, apparently for 'practical' reasons, the Bible is invoked as a guide for political economy and foreign relations. Dickens is largely read as fantasy, for those who like the characters and Dicken's London. The Odyssey, were it filmed today (I'm using Troy and Alexander as examples) would be given huge amounts of CGI and false or anachronistic historic details, even though it makes no sense to give historic details to what is myth (only some of the material 'facts' of Alexander are somewhat recoverable to us, but still beyond real historical analysis). Also, by CC's reasoning, the somewhat traditional (certainly modernist) distinction between 'science fiction' and 'fantasy' breaks down--which brings up an even more important point about how, in the post-modern episteme, 'science' has largely replaced 'magic', and is often invoked in the most reactionary and fundamentalist ways.
As for magical realism, it seems to be, in part, a movement that sprung largely out of putting neorealism onto the big screen--once you go to technicolour, everything looks like an MGM musical (and even the 1950s b&w romantic comedies like 'Sabrina' or 'Roman Holiday' look like 'neorealism' films from Italy simply because they are in b&w and do not involve magic). If you think I'm joking, I'm not. I assert that 'magical realism' has an audience because people like to read books that are like the movies.
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