In the following essay, Spindler explores the origination of the term "Magic Realism," and attempts "to put forward a framework that will incorporate the different manifestations of Magic Realism into one single model."

Magic realism is commonly associated with Latin American novelists such as Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, Isabel Allende and Miguel Angel Asturias. The term, however, originated in Europe in the 1920s when it was applied not to literature, but to painting. Since then, critics have made use of the term when dealing with various art forms including, more recently, cinema. The lack of an agreed definition and the proliferation of its use in various contexts have resulted in confusion. This, in turn, has led to the indiscrimi- nate use of the term to describe almost any work of literature or art that somehow departs from the established canons of realism...