My doctoral research constitutes three case studies dealing with the work of the
painter Remedios Varo and the writers Elena Garro and Carmen Boullosa. Their
works incorporate a mixed imagery and iconography to which criticism has
attached the label of surrealist, fantastic or magical realist respectively and
sometimes even indiscriminately. Uncertain about the usefulness of defining this
artist and these writers as ‘surrealist’ or ‘marvelous realist’, I would rather suggest
that their work enters into dialogue with surrealism, as well with the specific
American vocabulary Carpentier attributed to lo real maravilloso americano. The
fundamental objective of this thesis is to prove how this dialogue creates a counter
aesthetic of ‘revisionist mythmaking’ that foregrounds the existing gender
problematic within these two discourses, while strategically reassessing the role
woman has played in relationship to love, myth, history and creativity. It is my
belief that a different account of surrealism and lo real maravilloso lies within the
work of these women and that to start writing the story of such account will reveal
important connections between Varo’s assimilation of Latin American narratives
and Garro’s and Boullosa’s absorption of surrealism. On the one hand, this study
provides a new insight from which to comprehend the transcendence of surrealism
in the ambit of Mexican culture, amplifying the already existing critical work on the
field. On the other, it provides a new lens through which to understand and read
the specific work of Remedios Varo, Elena Garro and Carmen Boullosa while
discerning a common strategy of response between them