The Transmutation Of Magical Realism In Bernard Malamud's Short Stories

As a shining star in American literary history, Bernard Malamud earned his high place with his contributions to both the realist novels and exploration for the art of writing short stories and practice in artistic techniques. Among all his short stories, his notion of"realism"evoked wide concern and critical interest in academic circle.Since 1950s, Malamud has published three modern parables"Angel Levine,""The Jewbird"and"Talking Horse"by applying magical realist elements, which had arisen from Latin American literature. In the stretch of nearly twenty years, his writing techniques of magical realism transmute with the changes of society, literature and his own life. This transmutation includes mainly three aspects. First, in terms of theme, Jew's faith in God changes into the contradiction between the assimilated American Jews and the unassimilated ones, and then, to the search of identity and freedom in a broader sense. Second, regarding to the protagonist, Malamud, at first, writes Jewish people of twentieth century whom he knows for life; but general people in the society as a symbol replace the former ones to present a more common and genuine lifestyle. Third, the narratological features changes in correspondence with different stories to reproduce reality.With a close analysis of the narrative features and magical realist techniques by which the realities of different times are presented in the three short stores"Angel Levine,""The Jewbird"and"Talking Horse,"this thesis attempts to prove that, in nearly twenty years of writing, from the first one appeared to the third one revealed, Malamud well expresses the lifestyle of people, especially Jewish people, in a particular time with the employment of transmutation of the particular art of writing.