Newspapers, magazine and literary supplements, dates of analysis and archive information.

Parameters of Analysis

The intention in undertaking this analysis was to gain an understanding of how the British press has discussed and used magical realism in relation to Latin America. As the general search term ‘Latin America’ returned far too many results to permit a close analysis of articles within the time frame of this project, however, search terms were restricted to specific terms such as ‘magical realism’, ‘magic realism’ and ‘lo real maravilloso’, in addition to the names of prominent Latin American magical realist authors and closely related authors of fantastic literature. Search terms therefore also consisted of: ‘Isabel Allende’, ‘Miguel Ángel Asturias’, ‘Jorge Luis Borges’, ‘Alejo Carpentier’, ‘Cortázar’, ‘José Donoso’, ‘Laura Esquivel’, ‘Carlos Fuentes’, ‘García Márquez’, ‘Juan Rulfo’ and ‘Vargas Llosa’. Forenames were included if surnames alone once again generated too many results to permit a close analysis within the time frame of the project, or if surnames alone returned articles relating to figures who were not the author. If too many results were still generated by these search terms (for example, more than fifty articles for one search term in one decade and one newspaper alone), and thereby threatened to impede the process of analysis, the search was narrowed by including additional terms alongside authors’ names, such as ‘magic’ and/or ‘Latin America’. In the case of the London Review of Books, search terms were entered into the Review’s website to find relevant articles, and then read using the University of Manchester’s hard copy archive.