User talk:Ebenfc

Welcome

Greetings...

Hello, Ebenfc, and welcome to Wikipedia!

To get started, click on the green welcome.

I hope you like it here and decide to stay!

Happy editing! jbmurray (talk • contribs) 19:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Magical Realism Reconsidered

I'm looking forward to working with your class during the semester - if you have any questions about the project or Wikipedia in general, please feel free to leave me a note at User talk:Awadewit. Wikipedians are here to help you! Awadewit (talk) 19:35, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Bibliography assignment

Hi, here are the details of the MRR annotated bibliography assignment...

Good Wikipedia articles are built on a foundation of good sources. In this respect, Wikipedia articles are not much different from academic essays. In fact, if anything a good Wikipedia article is more reliant on good sources than are other academic or scholarly texts. The whole notion of verifiability, which is the first of the encyclopedia's five pillars, depends upon reliable sources.

The aim of this bibliography assignment, then, is to identify, read, and comment on the most important and reliable sources that relate to the topic of your chosen article.

In coordination with your group, you need to do the following:

Identify the most important sources for your topic. These will be both books and articles. They will vary depending upon the kind of topic you have chosen, but to give a couple of examples this book is a key one for the general topic of magic realism, while this biography would be essential for the article on Gabriel García Márquez.
Use databases and the Koerner library catalogue to identify these sources. Look for as many as possible in the first instance; you will later choose between them. On the whole, they will not be online sources (though of course many articles are now available online thanks to JSTOR and other services).
Aim to come up with a long list of, say, 5-20 books and perhaps 15-40 articles. Obviously, for some topics there will be more material than for others. So for some topics you will need to do more searching; for other topics, you will need to be more careful and discerning as you choose between sources. Look far and wide and be inventive in thinking about good sources.
In some cases, the article may already have a number of references, either in the article itself, or perhaps somewhere in its talkpage archives. You should take account of these, but you should still undertake your own search, not least to find new material that has not been considered before.
To figure out what you need, you will also have to look at your article and consider what it is missing, what needs to be improved, where it could do with better sources, etc. In other words, you will have to start planning how you are going to work on and rewrite the article.
Come up with a final short list of c. 2-4 books and perhaps 6-24 articles.
Put the long list (of all the sources you have found) as well as the short list (of the sources you have decided are the most important) on your article's talk page by Wednesday, January 20.
Distribute the sources among the members of your group. Each person should be reading the equivalent of one full book or six articles. Exceptionally long books may be divided up between group members.
Read the sources, bearing in mind the information that is going to be useful as you work on the article. Think about what it covers and take a note of particular page numbers.
Produce an annotated bibliography of the sources you have read. This will consist of a summary or précis of the most important aspects of the texts, which should be at least 150 words long for each article read; 600 words for each book. You should put this on your user page by Monday, February 8.

To coordinate with the other members of your group (whose names you can find here), use their talk pages. Each time that you log in to Wikipedia, you will notice that if you have a message waiting for you, there will be a yellow banner at the top of the page.

Good luck! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:02, 11 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

heads up

Heya, just to point out that if you look here you'll see that User:Awadewit has volunteered to give special help to your article, Magic realism. Of course, you guys are to take the lead, and above all do the research required to improve the article. But you should definitely feel free to contact Awadewit on her talk page. You'll find she's very friendly and knowledgeable about writing for Wikipedia, and will give you as much help as she can.

Incidentally, you should also (as I mentioned before) be putting [project page] on your watchlist, so you can see changes like this one. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 23:16, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Talk page note

Ebenfc, I noticed you'd posted a comment to Larodge's user page. I think you meant to post it to their talk page, so I've moved it there for you. Mike Christie (talk) 00:10, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Re resources

Hey Eben (is it Eben?)

I've got a dozen books, definitely half of which are good. No articles as of yet. Wish I knew where the other group members were at, so we can correspond on things. I want to look into art and music, but I don't want to do just that. So I guess what you meant by read whatever we want was whichever books we've got, to look at those. But we don't want overlap, so then we've gotta correspond somewhere I guess... I've got a few books that look specifically at the surrealism vs magic realism argument. I've got some Canadian magic realism shorts and criticisms: maybe those can be dumped?

Toodles Larodge (talk) 01:20, 19 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

resources

Hey Eben,
Don't know if you'll get this before class, but I'll bring potential books on Monday. :D See you soon.

24.87.92.248 (talk) 02:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Annotated Bibliography

Bowers, Maggie A. Magic(al) Realism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.

Magic(al) Realism by Maggie Ann Bowers will serve as an important critical perspective into the difficult task of defining magical realism. Her book aims to define and differentiate magical realism from other literary modes as well as distinguish between various forms utilized by different authors. An important goal of the book is to make a critical analysis of origins of varying influences and types of literary modes of the magical realism movement, as well as an attempt to distinguish between different types of literary modes relevant to defining magical realism. She also discusses different locations of magical realism and the geographical, ontological and cultural influences these factors play on the author and the literary work. She argues that magical realism is not only used differently in different cultures, but that each author has his or her own definition of what magical realism is and that in order to understand magical realism as a whole, it must be understood within the context of a culture, country or even simply a single author.

I will now briefly discuss Bowers’ arguments in order to give the basis of her argument and how it can be used in creating a thorough critical addition to Wikipedia’s page.

First, in her introduction, Bowers argues that in order to define magical realism it is important to differentiate it from magic realism and marvelous realism. She argues that magic realism, first originated “from the German Magischer Realismus’, which was coined in Germany in the 1920s, refers “to art that attempts to produce a clear depiction of reality that includes a presentation of the mysterious elements of everyday life.” Marvelous realism, she argues was introduced by Carpentier in the 1940s and refers specifically to Latin America; she argues that the term refers “to narrative art that presents the mystical and magical elements as an integral part of everyday reality in Latin America.” Finally, magical realism, also introduced in the 1940’s refers “to narrative art that presents extraordinary occurrences as an ordinary part of everyday reality.” In order to encapsulate aspects of both magic and magical concepts of magical realism, she uses an umbrella term, magic(al) realism.

Second, Bowers argues that in order to fully understand the literary movement of magical realism, it is important to understand its origins in art, how this inspired writing in Europe, and how this was interpreted and/or inspired the boom in Latin America. Breifly summarized, Bowers argues that Franz Roh first coined the term in 1925 in order to better critique art at that time. This term spread throuout Europe, impressing many artists. Carpentier, having lived in Europe and having been introduced to such art, then introduced lo real maravilloso to better do justice to the splendor of Latin American culture. Garcia Marquez arguably produced the most iconic of forms of magical realism, though Bower’s argues isn’t always consistent within the realm he creates. She argues that many authors fluctuate in the realm of magical realism in which they write. She argues that for each book and for each author, different rules apply, different varying forms of magical realism are taking place, thus making magical realism very difficult to define in a way that captures all such forms.

Finally, Bowers attempts to differentiate different styles of magical realism within the realm of Latin America, Europe, and North America. For use in our contribution to the Wikipedia article, a pertinent example follows: “The main difference of style between the writing of Carpentier and Garcia Marquez’s magical realist writing realist the full extend of the problem of assuming that Latin American magical realism can be discussed as one complicated category. Carpentier’s writing is predominantly realist with some magical happenings, whereas Garcia Marquez’s writing has an overwhelming atmosphere of nostalgia, and magical happenings such as the birth of a child with a tail occur as a matter of everyday reality.” Bowers argues that it is important to understand how each author uses magical realist elements within their work, but not to use the blanketing statement of saying they are all magical realist works.

Note: Bowers’ analysis of magical realism within the scope of locations outside Latin America, this may not prove pertinent in our definition, as our goal is to provide an unbiased, thorough analysis of magical realism within Latin America. However, in order to define what something is, it is also important to define what it isn’t. Therefore, we may find it necessary to include comparisons of other forms of magical realism with that of Latin American in order to give the reader an in-depth understanding of how other authors are using this narrative mode.

--Ebenfc (talk) 03:55, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cuidado!

I'm totally stepping on your toes! Watch out for Larodge, she-za beeyitch! :D But yes, maybe OK my changes... ~~---- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Larodge (talk • contribs) 03:15, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]