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A HISTORY OF THE SURREALIST NOVEL

A History of the Surrealist Novel offers a rich, long, and elastic histori-
ography of the surrealist novel, taking into consideration an abundance
of texts previously left out of critical accounts. Its twenty thematically
organized chapters examine surrealist prose texts written in French,
English, Spanish, German, Greek, and Japanese, from the emergence
of the surrealist movement in the s and s, through the post-
war and postmodern periods, and up to the contemporary moment.
This approach extends received narratives regarding surrealism’s geo-
graphical locations and considers its transnational movement and
modes of circulation. Moreover, it challenges critical biases that have
defined surrealism in predominantly masculine terms, and which tie
the movement to the interwar or early post-war years. This book will
appeal both to scholars and students of surrealism and its legacies,
modernist literature, and the history of the novel.

  is Associate Professor of English at Linköping University,

Sweden. She is the author of Angela Carter and Surrealism: ‘A Feminist
Libertarian Aesthetic’ (), editor of Surrealist Women’s Writing:
A Critical Exploration (), and on the editorial boards of the
International Journal of Surrealism and The International Society for
the Study of Surrealism (ISSS).

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A HISTORY OF THE
SURREALIST NOVEL

     
ANNA WATZ
Linköping University, Sweden

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In memory of Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron

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Contents

List of Figures page ix

List of Contributors x
Acknowledgements xvi
Introduction 
Anna Watz

.  
. Autobiography 
Katharine Conley
. Diverging Genealogies of the Surrealist Unconscious 
Jean-Michel Rabaté
. Automatism, Autobiography, and Thanatography in the
Surrealist Novel 
Abigail Susik
. Urban Nature: The City in the Surrealist Novel 
Effie Rentzou
. Nostalgia and Childhood in the Surrealist Novel 
David Hopkins
. Surrealist Collage Narrative 
Elza Adamowicz

.   

. The Surrealist Novel and the Gothic 
Neil Matheson
. Surrealism’s Anti-Bildungsroman 
Natalya Lusty

vii

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viii Contents
. The Mother Figure in the Surrealist Novel 
Anna Watz
. British Surrealism at War 
Jeannette Baxter
. Surrealist Narratives of Trauma 
Patricia Allmer

. , , 

. Surrealism and the Science Fiction Novel 
Gavin Parkinson
. Pataphysics 
Donna Roberts
. Alchemical Narratives 
Victoria Ferentinou
. Animals and Ecology in the Surrealist Novel 
Kristoffer Noheden

.  

. Nature and Surrealism in the Latin American Novel of
the Tropics 
María Clara Bernal
. Surrealism, Existentialism, and Fictions of Blackness 
Jonathan P. Eburne
. Social Critique in the Japanese Post-War Surrealist Novel 
Felicity Gee
. The World of the Surrealist Novel 
Delia Ungureanu
. Feminist-Surrealism in the Contemporary Novel 
Catriona McAra
Afterword: Novels Eclipsed by the Sun of Poetry? 
Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron

Index 

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Figures

. Michel Leiris, Ma vie par moi-même, . Pencil drawing.

© Jean Jamin pour les œuvres de Michel Leiris / Photo
Archives Gallimard. page 
. Unica Zürn, Ein Märchenbuch für Friedrich
Schröder-Sonnenstern (A Fairytale Book for Friedrich
Schröder-Sonnenstern), . Ubu Gallery, New York.
© Brinkmann & Bose Berlin, Germany. 
. Unica Zürn, Ein Märchenbuch für Friedrich
Schröder-Sonnenstern (A Fairytale Book for Friedrich
Schröder-Sonnenstern), . Ubu Gallery, New York.
© Brinkmann & Bose Berlin, Germany. 
. René Magritte, Je ne vois pas la (femme) cachée dans
la forêt, . © C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society
(ARS), New York, . Photo credit: Banque d’Images,
ADAGP / Art Resource, New York. 
. Dorothea Tanning, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, . Oil on
canvas. Tate Collection. © ADAGP, Paris, and DACS,
London, . 

ix

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Contributors

Elza Adamowicz is Professor Emerita of French Literature and Visual

Culture at Queen Mary, University of London. She has published
widely on surrealism and she is the author of André Breton:
A Bibliography (–) (), Surrealist Collage in Text and
Image: Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse (Cambridge University Press,
, ), Ceci n’est pas un tableau: Les écrits surréalistes sur l’art
(), Bunuel/Dali: Un chien andalou (), Dada Bodies: Between
Battlefield and Fairground (), and The Eye of the Poet: André Breton
and the Visual Arts (), editor of Surrealism: Crossings/Frontiers
(), and co-editor of Dada and Beyond, vols.  and  (,
), Back to the Futurists (), and Masculin-féminin, special issue
of Melusine,  ().
Patricia Allmer is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at
the University of Edinburgh. Her books include The Traumatic Surreal:
Germanophone Women Artists, Surrealism, and the Second World War
(), Lee Miller: Photography, Surrealism, and Beyond (), René
Magritte: Beyond Painting (), the biography René Magritte (),
and the edited volume Intersections: Women Artists/Surrealism/
Modernism (). She has curated exhibitions including Taking
Shots: The Photography of William S. Burroughs (The Photographers’
Gallery, ) and Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism
(Manchester Art Gallery, ). Her most recent exhibition catalogue
essays are on ‘Magischer Realismus, Neue Sachlichkeit, and Surrealism
in Germany’, in Surrealism Beyond Borders (), ‘Fantastic Visions –
Women Photographers and Surrealism’, in Fantastic Women: Surreal
Worlds from Meret Oppenheim to Frida Kahlo (), and ‘Transitions:
Surrealism, Exile, and Art of This Century’, in Peggy Guggenheim: The
Last Dogaressa ().

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Contributors xi
Jeannette Baxter is Reader in English Literature at Anglia Ruskin
University. She has published widely in the field of modern and
contemporary literature, presenting her work regularly to international
academic and non-academic audiences, and editing Contemporary
Critical Perspectives, a critically acclaimed book series on contemporary
writing (Bloomsbury). Baxter is the author of J.G. Ballard’s Surrealist
Imagination: Spectacular Authorship (), editor of Contemporary
Critical Perspectives: J.G. Ballard (), and co-editor of Visions and
Revisions: Essays on J.G. Ballard (), A Literature of Restitution:
Critical Essays on W.G. Sebald (), and Contemporary Critical
Perspectives: Andrea Levy ().
María Clara Bernal is Associate Professor of Art History at Universidad de
Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. She received her MA and PhD in
Modern Art History and Theory from the University of Essex in the
UK. Her publications include Más alla de lo real maravilloso: El surrea-
lismo y el caribe (, ), Displaced: Arte contemporáneo de Colombia
(), Traducir la imágen: El arte en la esfera transcultural (), Latin
America beyond Lo real maravilloso: Lam, surrealism and the Créolité
Movement (), and Redes intelectuales: Arte y política en América
Latina ().
Jacqueline Chénieux-Gendron was Emerita Director of Research of CNRS
(Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Paris. Her monographs
and edited books include Surréalisme et le roman, – (;
expanded, revised, and re-released under the title Inventer le réel:
Surréalisme et le roman (–), ), Le surréalisme (), Du
surréalisme et du plaisir (), ‘Il y aura une fois’: Une anthologie du
surréalisme (), and Surréalismes: L’esprit et l’histoire (). In ,
she co-curated the exhibition L’Invention du surréalisme – Des Champs
magnétiques à Nadja at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.
Katharine Conley is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at
William & Mary. She is the author of Surrealist Ghostliness (),
Robert Desnos, Surrealism, and the Marvelous in Everyday Life (),
and Automatic Woman: The Representation of Woman in Surrealism
(). She is co-editor, with Pierre Taminiaux, of Yale French
Studies: Surrealism and Its Others (), with Marie-Claire Dumas of
Robert Desnos pour l’an  (), and, with Georgiana M.M. Colvile,
of La femme s’entête: La part du féminin dans le surréalisme (). She is

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xii Contributors
also the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on
surrealism and its legacies.
Jonathan P. Eburne teaches at Penn State University, where he is a
Professor of Comparative Literature, English, and French and
Francophone studies. He is the author of Outsider Theory: Intellectual
Histories of Unorthodox Ideas (), which received the  James
Russell Lowell Prize from the Modern Language Association, and
Surrealism and the Art of Crime (); he is co-editor of four other
books. He is founding co-editor (with Amy J. Elias) and former Editor-
in-Chief of the award-winning ASAP/Journal, and founder and acting
Past President of ISSS: the International Society for the Study of
Surrealism. He is also the series editor of the ‘Refiguring Modernism’
book series at the Pennsylvania State University Press.
Victoria Ferentinou is Assistant Professor at the University of Ioannina
where she teaches art theory and history of art. She was the recipient of a
research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great
Britain and a CHS-CCS research fellowship from the University of
Harvard. Ferentinou is a co-editor of the books Surrealism, Occultism,
and Politics: In Search of the Marvellous () and The Dance of Moon
and Sun: Ithell Colquhoun, British Women and Surrealism (). She is
the organizer of the international symposium Visual Ecotopias: History,
Theory, Criticism (st Biennale of Western Balkans, ) and the
author of numerous publications on surrealism, including essays on
Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun, Pierre Mabille, Valentine
Penrose, Nanos Valaoritis, Remedios Varo, and Marie Wilson. She is
currently working on a book on women artists, surrealism, and myth.
Felicity Gee is Senior Lecturer in Modernism and World Cinema at the
University of Exeter. She is the author of the monograph Magic Realism,
World Cinema, and the Avant-Garde (), and has published widely
on surrealist literature and film, affect theory, and avant-garde cinema.
Her current research project is focused on the oeuvre of surrealist poet
and artist Valentine Penrose, positioned within a wider interest in
modernist women travellers and exilic artists. Gee’s research is resolutely
interdisciplinary, straddling literary studies, art history, film-philosophy,
and critical theory.
David Hopkins is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of
Glasgow. His books include Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: The Bride
Shared (), Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction (),

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Contributors xiii
Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp (), Virgin Microbe: Essays
on Dada (co-edited with Michael White, ), A Companion to Dada
and Surrealism (edited, ), and After Modern Art – (second
edition, ). His latest book is Dark Toys: Surrealism and the Culture
of Childhood ().
Natalya Lusty is Professor of Cultural Studies and an ARC Future Fellow
(–) at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of
Surrealism, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (, ), Dreams and
Modernity: A Cultural History (with Helen Groth, ), and the
co-edited volumes Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images ()
and Modernism and Masculinity (Cambridge University Press, ).
Most recently, she was the editor of Cambridge Critical Concepts:
Surrealism (Cambridge University Press, ).
Neil Matheson is Senior Lecturer in Theory and Criticism of Photography
at the University of Westminster. Following doctoral research in surre-
alism and masculinity he has published widely on photography, surre-
alism, and contemporary art, including a major sourcebook, The Sources
of Surrealism (). More recent publications include the jointly edited
The Machine and the Ghost () and Surrealism and the Gothic: Castles
of the Interior (). His most recent research has focused on Japanese
photography and literature.
Catriona McAra is Lecturer in Art History at the University of Aberdeen.
She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art history, and a leading
authority on the work of Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington,
with particular interests in revisionary historiography and feminist-
surrealist legacies in early twenty-first-century art and literary practices.
McAra is author of A Surrealist Stratigraphy of Dorothea Tanning’s
Chasm () and The Medium of Leonora Carrington ().
Kristoffer Noheden is Research Fellow in the Department of Media
Studies, Stockholm University. He has published extensively on surre-
alism across the art forms, in relation to film theory, ecology,
and occultism.
Gavin Parkinson is Professor in European Modernism at the Courtauld
Institute of Art, London, and was editor of the Ashgate and Routledge
series ‘Studies in Surrealism’. He has published numerous essays and
articles, mainly on surrealism. His books are Robert Rauschenberg and
Surrealism: Art, ‘Sensibility’ and War in the s (), Enchanted

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xiv Contributors
Ground: André Breton, Modernism and the Surrealist Appraisal of Fin-de-
Siècle Painting (), Futures of Surrealism (), Surrealism, Art and
Modern Science (), The Duchamp Book (), and the edited
collection Surrealism, Science Fiction and Comics ().
Jean-Michel Rabaté, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at
the University of Pennsylvania, co-editor of the Journal of Modern
Literature, co-founder and senior curator of the Slought Foundation,
is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and author or
editor of more than forty books on modernism, psychoanalysis, philos-
ophy, and literary theory. Monographs include Rust (), Kafka
L.O.L. (), Rire au soleil (), Beckett and Sade (Cambridge
University Press, ), Rires prodigues: Rire et jouissance chez Marx,
Freud et Kafka (), and James Joyce, Hérétique et Prodigue (). He
has edited After Derrida (Cambridge University Press, ), The New
Samuel Beckett Studies (Cambridge University Press, ),
Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism (), Knots: Post-
Lacanian Readings of Literature and Film () and, with Angeliki
Spiropolou, Historical Modernisms: Time, History and Modernist
Aesthetics ().
Effie Rentzou is a Professor of French Literature in the Department of
French and Italian at Princeton University. She studies avant-garde and
modernist literature and art, and particularly poetics, the relation
between image and text, politics and literature, and the internationali-
zation of the avant-garde. She is the author of Littérature malgré elle: Le
surréalisme et la transformation du littéraire (), which examines the
construction of literary phenomena in the production of an anti-literary
movement, surrealism; and co-editor of the volume : The Year of
French Modernism (). Her newest book, Concepts of the World: The
French Avant-garde and the Idea of the International (), explores the
conceptualization of the global in the work and activities of writers and
artists within and around futurism, Dada, and surrealism.
Donna Roberts is a Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her PhD
from the University of Essex was on the relations between the ideas of
the Grand Jeu group and the painting of the Czech artist Josef Šima.
Her main areas of publication have focused on various aspects of the
writings of the Grand Jeu group, Czech surrealism, the writings of
Roger Caillois, surrealist periodicals, and the theme of surrealism and

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Contributors xv
nature. She is currently completing a monograph titled ‘A Feeling for
Nature’: Surrealism, from Natural History to Ecology.
Abigail Susik is Associate Professor of Art History at Willamette University
and Faculty Curator at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art in Oregon. She
is the author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (), and co-
editor of Surrealism and Film after : Absolutely Modern Mysteries
() and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance
(). Susik is a founding board member of the International
Society for the Study of Surrealism.
Delia Ungureanu is Associate Director of Harvard’s Institute for World
Literature and a tenured Associate Professor of Literary Theory in the
Department of Literary Studies at the University of Bucharest. She is
the author of From Paris to Tlön: Surrealism as World Literature (),
and of Poetica Apocalipsei: Războiul cultural în revistele literare românești
(–) (The Poetics of Apocalypse: The Cultural War in Romanian
Literary Magazines, –, ). She has published essays on
canon formation, modern poetry and poetics, Shakespeare, and
Nabokov, and has co-edited with Thomas Pavel Romanian Literature
in Today’s World, a special issue of the Journal of World Literature. Her
most recent book, Time Regained: World Literature and Cinema (),
redefines the artistic object beyond disciplinary borders with major
filmmakers including Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, Martin
Scorsese, Raúl Ruíz, Wong Kar-wai, Stephen Daldry, and Paolo
Sorrentino. Together with Gisèle Sapiro she has co-edited a special issue
of the Journal of World Literature dedicated to the memory and legacy of
Pascale Casanova, which has recently come out in book form with Brill
(). With Michael Wood, she has co-edited a special issue of the
Journal of World Literature dedicated to the organic relation between
literature and cinema.
Anna Watz is Associate Professor of English at Linköping University,
Sweden. She is the author of Angela Carter and Surrealism: ‘A Feminist
Libertarian Aesthetic’ () and editor of Surrealist Women’s Writing:
A Critical Exploration (). She has also published extensively on the
art and writing of Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington, and she
is currently completing a monograph titled Surrealism and Feminine
Difference.

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Acknowledgements

I am immensely grateful to all the contributors, without whose intellectual

vigour, dedication, and enthusiasm this volume would not have come to
fruition. Extra special thanks to Jonathan P. Eburne for his exceptional
insight, encouragement, generosity, and guidance. I also want to thank
Katharine Conley, Natalya Lusty, and Kristoffer Noheden, who have
offered invaluable intellectual support during various stages of this project,
as well as the anonymous reviewers of the volume. At Cambridge
University Press, warm thanks to Ray Ryan for his encouragement and
belief in the project and to Edgar Mendez and Thomas Haynes for support
during the preparation of the book. I gratefully acknowledge the Swedish
Research Council (-) for supporting my editorial and scholarly
contribution to this volume.
As the manuscript of this book is progressing through the final stages of
production, I have been reached by the sad news that Jacqueline
Chénieux-Gendron has passed away. Jacqueline, who has written the
Afterword to this collection of essays, was a world-leading authority on
surrealist writing – and on the surrealist novel in particular. Her  book
Le surréalisme et le roman, –, published in a revised edition as
Inventer le réel: Le surréalisme et le roman (–) in , is essential
reading for anyone working on surrealist literature and constitutes the
intellectual foundation upon which many essays in this collection build
their arguments.
In a letter to me, Jacqueline described her two major research interests
to be the surrealist novel and the work of surrealist women. And indeed,
Jacqueline’s role in promoting surrealist women’s literature cannot be
stressed enough. For instance, she was instrumental in the publication of
the writing of Leonora Carrington in French in the s and s. She
also encouraged Greta Knutson to start publishing her literary work in the
s; in addition to including Knutson in the trailblazing special issue of

xvi

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Acknowledgements xvii
Obliques, La femme surréaliste, in , Jacqueline also served as a link
between the artist and the literary journal Le nouveau commerce.
It saddens me that Jacqueline will not be able to see the material,
published version of her Afterword and the book that it closes.
This book is dedicated to her memory.

Anna Watz
September 

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