Because the genre of literary magical realism began, at the earliest, in the twentieth century, literary scholars would not place "The Black Cat," published by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843, in that movement.
Magical realism is a type of fiction characterized by a realistic setting that is somehow affected by elements that are magical or supernatural. The narrator of "The Black Cat" kills Pluto, his first cat, and sometime later, a cat that looks very much like but not identical to Pluto enters his life. The narrator's perversity turns him against this cat as well, and the narrator ends up accidentally killing his wife when he is aiming his ax at the cat. He inadvertently walls the cat up with his wife's corpse, but, days later, it makes enough noise to attract the police's attention, and the narrator's crime is revealed.
It is quite plausible that two black cats can look extremely similar except for a single marking, and it is also possible that a cat could survive without food or water for a few days. While the story may be somewhat implausible, there is nothing magical or supernatural in "The Black Cat," making it a horror story rather than a work of magical realism.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Is "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe a work of magical realism?
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