SOURCE: “Usurping Difference in the Feminine Fantastic from the Riverplate,” in Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 20, No. 1, Winter, 1996, pp. 235-49.

In the following essay, Clark discusses magic realism in works by women writers of the Riverplate region of Argentina and Uruguay.

The Riverplate region of Argentina and Uruguay witnessed a flowering of fantastic literature with precursors such as Leopoldo Lugones and Horacio Quiroga in the early decades of the twentieth century, and Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar as internationally acclaimed figures in the 1960s and 1970s. Borges and Cortázar transcended the marginalized position associated with a literary form which, in the predominantly realistic tradition of Latin American literature, was often considered to be second-rate and escapist. Today, the fantastic narrative has been recognized as a valid tool for the creation of a totalizing view and transcription of experience, however, while women writers from Argentina...