Johanna Malt
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199253425
- eISBN:
- 9780191698132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253425.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter addresses what happens when language is introduced into the picture-quite literally-in the form of the poème-objet, which combines text with three-dimensional collage. André Breton's own ...
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This chapter addresses what happens when language is introduced into the picture-quite literally-in the form of the poème-objet, which combines text with three-dimensional collage. André Breton's own practice in the domain of object creation diverges from that of Salvador Dalí and others in one crucial respect: the incorporation of language into the surrealist object. The chapter considers how Breton's own involvement with visual forms of surrealist activity is motivated by particular aims, notably that of including language in the category of phenomena to be reappraised and inscribed in a dialectic of subjective and objective forces. For in seeking to prove the materialist credentials on which surrealism's political engagement relied, Breton created a class of poème-objet in which a power struggle takes place between word and image, between concealment and display, between fetishism and sublimation.Less
This chapter addresses what happens when language is introduced into the picture-quite literally-in the form of the poème-objet, which combines text with three-dimensional collage. André Breton's own practice in the domain of object creation diverges from that of Salvador Dalí and others in one crucial respect: the incorporation of language into the surrealist object. The chapter considers how Breton's own involvement with visual forms of surrealist activity is motivated by particular aims, notably that of including language in the category of phenomena to be reappraised and inscribed in a dialectic of subjective and objective forces. For in seeking to prove the materialist credentials on which surrealism's political engagement relied, Breton created a class of poème-objet in which a power struggle takes place between word and image, between concealment and display, between fetishism and sublimation.
Johanna Malt
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199253425
- eISBN:
- 9780191698132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253425.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The point of departure in this chapter is the fundamental question of the possibility of a revolutionary art. What can writers and artists contribute to the cause of a Communist proletarian ...
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The point of departure in this chapter is the fundamental question of the possibility of a revolutionary art. What can writers and artists contribute to the cause of a Communist proletarian revolution? Though this may seem a very general, pragmatic, and perhaps ambitious place to start, it serves to establish the parameters of the debate in terms of Marxist cultural theory. The chapter sets out a brief account of André Breton's theory of the surrealist revolution, and sketches its possible positions in relation to the Communist revolution itself. The chapter's intention in doing this is not to rehearse a set of well-established surrealist tenets, and certainly not to retrace the movement's involvement with the Communist Party, but rather to establish the limitations of an approach based on individual or collective political engagement.Less
The point of departure in this chapter is the fundamental question of the possibility of a revolutionary art. What can writers and artists contribute to the cause of a Communist proletarian revolution? Though this may seem a very general, pragmatic, and perhaps ambitious place to start, it serves to establish the parameters of the debate in terms of Marxist cultural theory. The chapter sets out a brief account of André Breton's theory of the surrealist revolution, and sketches its possible positions in relation to the Communist revolution itself. The chapter's intention in doing this is not to rehearse a set of well-established surrealist tenets, and certainly not to retrace the movement's involvement with the Communist Party, but rather to establish the limitations of an approach based on individual or collective political engagement.
Johanna Malt
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199253425
- eISBN:
- 9780191698132
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253425.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
In a speech given in Prague in 1935, André Breton asked, ‘Is there, properly speaking, a left-wing art capable of defending itself?’. But despite his conviction that surrealism did indeed offer such ...
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In a speech given in Prague in 1935, André Breton asked, ‘Is there, properly speaking, a left-wing art capable of defending itself?’. But despite his conviction that surrealism did indeed offer such an art, Breton always struggled to make a theoretical connection between the surrealists' commitment to the cause of revolutionary socialism and the form that surrealist art and literature took. This book explores ways in which such a connection might be drawn, addressing the possibility of surrealist works as political in themselves and drawing on ways in which they have been considered as such by Marxists such as Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Encompassing Breton's and Louis Aragon's textual accounts of the object, as well as paintings and the various kinds of objet surréaliste produced from the end of the 1920s, it mobilises the concept of the fetish in order to consider such works as meeting points of surrealism's psychoanalytic and revolutionary preoccupations. Reading surrealist works of art and literature as political is not the same as knowing the surrealist movement to have been politically motivated. The revolutionary character of surrealist work is not always evident; indeed, the works themselves often seem to express a rather different set of concerns. As well as offering a new perspective on familiar and relatively neglected works, this book recuperates the gap between theory and practice as a productive space in which it is possible to recontextualise surrealist practice as an engagement with political questions on its own terms.Less
In a speech given in Prague in 1935, André Breton asked, ‘Is there, properly speaking, a left-wing art capable of defending itself?’. But despite his conviction that surrealism did indeed offer such an art, Breton always struggled to make a theoretical connection between the surrealists' commitment to the cause of revolutionary socialism and the form that surrealist art and literature took. This book explores ways in which such a connection might be drawn, addressing the possibility of surrealist works as political in themselves and drawing on ways in which they have been considered as such by Marxists such as Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno. Encompassing Breton's and Louis Aragon's textual accounts of the object, as well as paintings and the various kinds of objet surréaliste produced from the end of the 1920s, it mobilises the concept of the fetish in order to consider such works as meeting points of surrealism's psychoanalytic and revolutionary preoccupations. Reading surrealist works of art and literature as political is not the same as knowing the surrealist movement to have been politically motivated. The revolutionary character of surrealist work is not always evident; indeed, the works themselves often seem to express a rather different set of concerns. As well as offering a new perspective on familiar and relatively neglected works, this book recuperates the gap between theory and practice as a productive space in which it is possible to recontextualise surrealist practice as an engagement with political questions on its own terms.
Johanna Malt
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199253425
- eISBN:
- 9780191698132
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199253425.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Surrealist theory and practice in the 1920s and 1930s was caught between two poles. In the early days of the movement, much of its activity centred on the pursuit of automatism in various forms, ...
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Surrealist theory and practice in the 1920s and 1930s was caught between two poles. In the early days of the movement, much of its activity centred on the pursuit of automatism in various forms, including the automatic writing at which Robert Desnos so dangerously excelled, as well as non-verbal forms such as the game of ‘cadavre exquis’ in which each participant added a new body part to a creature without seeing what previous players had drawn. The early issues of La Révolution surrealiste contained many accounts of actual dreams, and the general emphasis was on the completest possible elimination of all traces of rational construction from the resulting products of the creative process. The various writings of André Breton and others on the question of the object have much to reveal about the surrealists' ambivalence towards the principle of revolutionary action.Less
Surrealist theory and practice in the 1920s and 1930s was caught between two poles. In the early days of the movement, much of its activity centred on the pursuit of automatism in various forms, including the automatic writing at which Robert Desnos so dangerously excelled, as well as non-verbal forms such as the game of ‘cadavre exquis’ in which each participant added a new body part to a creature without seeing what previous players had drawn. The early issues of La Révolution surrealiste contained many accounts of actual dreams, and the general emphasis was on the completest possible elimination of all traces of rational construction from the resulting products of the creative process. The various writings of André Breton and others on the question of the object have much to reveal about the surrealists' ambivalence towards the principle of revolutionary action.
Christophe Wall-Romana
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245482
- eISBN:
- 9780823252527
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245482.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The theoretician and leader of Surrealism, André Breton, was a much deeper cinephile than he has represented. This chapter argues that Breton took over Apollinaire's Surrealism by purging its ...
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The theoretician and leader of Surrealism, André Breton, was a much deeper cinephile than he has represented. This chapter argues that Breton took over Apollinaire's Surrealism by purging its cinepoetic dimension, replacing the cinema by a host of non-technological constructs such as the Unconscious, automatic writing, the marvellous image, etc. Four sub-arguments are presented: 1) Breton's early experiences with cinema were tainted with queer desire which he evacuated from Surrealism in favour of strict heterosexuality; 2) Breton allied himself with the best cinepoets of the time--Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, and Saint-Pol-Roux—although he elided cinema in their poetics in favour of the marvelous; 3) Breton campaigned against other cinepoets such as Cocteau, Paul Dermée, Ivan Goll; 4) Breton knew Epstein's cinepoetic theories and even recycled some of Epstein's formulations in order to define Surrealism. Altogether, this chapter presents a radical new genealogy of Surrealism as based on the erasure and sublimation of cinepoetry, its practitioners and theoreticians.Less
The theoretician and leader of Surrealism, André Breton, was a much deeper cinephile than he has represented. This chapter argues that Breton took over Apollinaire's Surrealism by purging its cinepoetic dimension, replacing the cinema by a host of non-technological constructs such as the Unconscious, automatic writing, the marvellous image, etc. Four sub-arguments are presented: 1) Breton's early experiences with cinema were tainted with queer desire which he evacuated from Surrealism in favour of strict heterosexuality; 2) Breton allied himself with the best cinepoets of the time--Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, and Saint-Pol-Roux—although he elided cinema in their poetics in favour of the marvelous; 3) Breton campaigned against other cinepoets such as Cocteau, Paul Dermée, Ivan Goll; 4) Breton knew Epstein's cinepoetic theories and even recycled some of Epstein's formulations in order to define Surrealism. Altogether, this chapter presents a radical new genealogy of Surrealism as based on the erasure and sublimation of cinepoetry, its practitioners and theoreticians.
Jeremy Biles
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780823265190
- eISBN:
- 9780823266890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823265190.003.0015
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
In light of his polemical relations with André Breton and his critiques of surrealism, Bataille is widely but mistakenly thought to have an aversion to the dream and the unconscious. Revealing ...
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In light of his polemical relations with André Breton and his critiques of surrealism, Bataille is widely but mistakenly thought to have an aversion to the dream and the unconscious. Revealing important connections between psychoanalysis and Bataille, this essay seeks to correct this misreading of Bataille, demonstrating that for Bataille, dream and the powers of the unconscious are in fact intimately related to his conception of the sacred. The essay adumbrates a Bataillean “heterological” approach to the dream and dream interpretation, arguing that for Bataille, the dream is a crucial element of ecstatic “nonknowledge” and “inner experience.”Less
In light of his polemical relations with André Breton and his critiques of surrealism, Bataille is widely but mistakenly thought to have an aversion to the dream and the unconscious. Revealing important connections between psychoanalysis and Bataille, this essay seeks to correct this misreading of Bataille, demonstrating that for Bataille, dream and the powers of the unconscious are in fact intimately related to his conception of the sacred. The essay adumbrates a Bataillean “heterological” approach to the dream and dream interpretation, arguing that for Bataille, the dream is a crucial element of ecstatic “nonknowledge” and “inner experience.”
Carrie Noland
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167048
- eISBN:
- 9780231538640
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167048.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter analyzes the poetic choices Aimé Césaire made during the interwar period. On the one hand, Césaire felt the need to satisfy poetic demands: he wanted to live up to and advance the ...
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This chapter analyzes the poetic choices Aimé Césaire made during the interwar period. On the one hand, Césaire felt the need to satisfy poetic demands: he wanted to live up to and advance the technical and rhetorical standards of the twentieth-century print lyric. On the other hand, he was committed to political change; his recourse to journalistic discourse suggests that he was responding to an ethical imperative to testify for a shared experience of oppression. Césaire's Cahier weaves together both referential (journalistic) discourses and self-referential (lyric) discourses, attempting to be situated and to transcend situation at the very same time. The tension between political relevance and poetic transcendence was also at the heart of the Affaire Aragon, a debate between Louis Aragon's communism and André Breton's surrealism that leaves its mark on Césaire's approach to writing the Cahier.Less
This chapter analyzes the poetic choices Aimé Césaire made during the interwar period. On the one hand, Césaire felt the need to satisfy poetic demands: he wanted to live up to and advance the technical and rhetorical standards of the twentieth-century print lyric. On the other hand, he was committed to political change; his recourse to journalistic discourse suggests that he was responding to an ethical imperative to testify for a shared experience of oppression. Césaire's Cahier weaves together both referential (journalistic) discourses and self-referential (lyric) discourses, attempting to be situated and to transcend situation at the very same time. The tension between political relevance and poetic transcendence was also at the heart of the Affaire Aragon, a debate between Louis Aragon's communism and André Breton's surrealism that leaves its mark on Césaire's approach to writing the Cahier.
Vincent Debaene
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226106908
- eISBN:
- 9780226107233
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226107233.003.0012
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Whereas chapter 10 turned to the beginning of the twentieth century to gauge writers’ and literary scholars’ reactions to the advent of the social sciences, chapter 11 examines the 1930s through the ...
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Whereas chapter 10 turned to the beginning of the twentieth century to gauge writers’ and literary scholars’ reactions to the advent of the social sciences, chapter 11 examines the 1930s through the 1960s in order to take a more contemporary look at how literature writ large responded to the development of the social sciences. This chapter engages with figures such as Ramon Fernandez, André Breton, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Roland Barthes, highlighting specific moments (such as the reception of Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques) where the figure of the artist coexists uneasily with that of the scientist. The chapter explores how literature sought to define itself and its role in relation to new scientific disciplines that redrew old lines of disciplinary demarcation.Less
Whereas chapter 10 turned to the beginning of the twentieth century to gauge writers’ and literary scholars’ reactions to the advent of the social sciences, chapter 11 examines the 1930s through the 1960s in order to take a more contemporary look at how literature writ large responded to the development of the social sciences. This chapter engages with figures such as Ramon Fernandez, André Breton, Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Roland Barthes, highlighting specific moments (such as the reception of Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques) where the figure of the artist coexists uneasily with that of the scientist. The chapter explores how literature sought to define itself and its role in relation to new scientific disciplines that redrew old lines of disciplinary demarcation.
Stamatina Dimakopoulou
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199545810
- eISBN:
- 9780191803475
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199545810.003.0042
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter discusses the histories of the View and VVV. Charles Henri Ford's View appeared alongside the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in New York City, and found its place in the history of ...
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This chapter discusses the histories of the View and VVV. Charles Henri Ford's View appeared alongside the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in New York City, and found its place in the history of the American ‘little magazine’, along with André Breton's VVV, as the main forum for the exiled Surrealists during the dark years of the Second World War. Surrealism in View encouraged an opening out to mainstream and popular cultures that were elided from the early experiments of the Abstract Expressionists. It is in comparison with View's eclectic ‘favouritism’ that the chapter considers VVV's attempt to relate Surrealism to American concerns.Less
This chapter discusses the histories of the View and VVV. Charles Henri Ford's View appeared alongside the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in New York City, and found its place in the history of the American ‘little magazine’, along with André Breton's VVV, as the main forum for the exiled Surrealists during the dark years of the Second World War. Surrealism in View encouraged an opening out to mainstream and popular cultures that were elided from the early experiments of the Abstract Expressionists. It is in comparison with View's eclectic ‘favouritism’ that the chapter considers VVV's attempt to relate Surrealism to American concerns.
James King
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474414500
- eISBN:
- 9781474421874
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474414500.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
As an artist, an impresario, a biographer and a collector, Roland Penrose (1900–1984) is a key figure in the study of modern art in England. This book explores the intricacies of Penrose's life and ...
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As an artist, an impresario, a biographer and a collector, Roland Penrose (1900–1984) is a key figure in the study of modern art in England. This book explores the intricacies of Penrose's life and work, tracing the profound effects of his upbringing in a Quaker household on his values, the early influence of Roger Fry, and his friendships with Max Ernst, André Breton and other surrealists, especially Paul Éluard. Penrose's conflicted relationship with Pablo Picasso, his tireless promotion of surrealism and the production of his own surrealist art are also discussed. Penrose's complex professional and personal lives are handled with a deftness of touch, including his pacifism, his work as a biographer and art historian, as well as his unconventionality, especially in his two marriages — including that to Lee Miller — and his numerous love affairs.Less
As an artist, an impresario, a biographer and a collector, Roland Penrose (1900–1984) is a key figure in the study of modern art in England. This book explores the intricacies of Penrose's life and work, tracing the profound effects of his upbringing in a Quaker household on his values, the early influence of Roger Fry, and his friendships with Max Ernst, André Breton and other surrealists, especially Paul Éluard. Penrose's conflicted relationship with Pablo Picasso, his tireless promotion of surrealism and the production of his own surrealist art are also discussed. Penrose's complex professional and personal lives are handled with a deftness of touch, including his pacifism, his work as a biographer and art historian, as well as his unconventionality, especially in his two marriages — including that to Lee Miller — and his numerous love affairs.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311154
- eISBN:
- 9781846313790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313790.002
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter discusses the part played by surrealism as a negative exemplum for the early poetics of language writing. It explains the fault in considering surrealism as expressivism and attempts to ...
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This chapter discusses the part played by surrealism as a negative exemplum for the early poetics of language writing. It explains the fault in considering surrealism as expressivism and attempts to align language writing and surrealism based on Peter Nicholls' account of the so-called modernist poetics of negation. It also considers a positive comparison of surrealism and objectivism and provides an interpretation of André Breton and Philippe Soupault's The Magnetic Fields.Less
This chapter discusses the part played by surrealism as a negative exemplum for the early poetics of language writing. It explains the fault in considering surrealism as expressivism and attempts to align language writing and surrealism based on Peter Nicholls' account of the so-called modernist poetics of negation. It also considers a positive comparison of surrealism and objectivism and provides an interpretation of André Breton and Philippe Soupault's The Magnetic Fields.
Alfred Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226795409
- eISBN:
- 9780226795416
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226795416.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter examines the reinvention of Prague as a modernist metropolis, focusing on the seminal influence of Guillaume Apollinaire's story “Le Passant de Prague” on avant-garde Czech writers of ...
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This chapter examines the reinvention of Prague as a modernist metropolis, focusing on the seminal influence of Guillaume Apollinaire's story “Le Passant de Prague” on avant-garde Czech writers of the interwar period. The story describes how a French visitor to the city encounters the Eternal Jew as he wanders through Prague. Inspiring numerous redactions of his life story and constantly assuming new pseudonyms across time, he personifies the city-book and its history. Vítězslav Nezval's narrative poem “Pražský chodec,” in which Prague is personified as a prostitute with whom the narrator falls in love, was directly inspired by Apollinaire's story. The modernist theme of the city as woman serves as the leitmotif of this and other poems by Nezval. Apollinaire's foundational story also had a profound impact on French cultural and political responses to Prague. The most prominent French visitor to the city between the wars was André Breton, the founder of French surrealism, who, in March 1935, during a lecture to the Czech Surrealist Group, famously described Prague as the “magical capital of Old Europe.” Unlike Apollinaire and Breton, the twenty-two-year-old Camus felt distinctly out of place and ill at ease in the “magical capital of Old Europe,” but Prague also served as a discursive impediment to his progress as a writer. The chapter also explores Camus's repeated attempts to “unwrite” Prague in order to find his own voice as a writer.Less
This chapter examines the reinvention of Prague as a modernist metropolis, focusing on the seminal influence of Guillaume Apollinaire's story “Le Passant de Prague” on avant-garde Czech writers of the interwar period. The story describes how a French visitor to the city encounters the Eternal Jew as he wanders through Prague. Inspiring numerous redactions of his life story and constantly assuming new pseudonyms across time, he personifies the city-book and its history. Vítězslav Nezval's narrative poem “Pražský chodec,” in which Prague is personified as a prostitute with whom the narrator falls in love, was directly inspired by Apollinaire's story. The modernist theme of the city as woman serves as the leitmotif of this and other poems by Nezval. Apollinaire's foundational story also had a profound impact on French cultural and political responses to Prague. The most prominent French visitor to the city between the wars was André Breton, the founder of French surrealism, who, in March 1935, during a lecture to the Czech Surrealist Group, famously described Prague as the “magical capital of Old Europe.” Unlike Apollinaire and Breton, the twenty-two-year-old Camus felt distinctly out of place and ill at ease in the “magical capital of Old Europe,” but Prague also served as a discursive impediment to his progress as a writer. The chapter also explores Camus's repeated attempts to “unwrite” Prague in order to find his own voice as a writer.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781846311154
- eISBN:
- 9781846313790
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/UPO9781846313790.003
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter examines American poet William Carlos Williams' engagement with surrealism. It explains that Williams is an important figure for many language writers but their reception of his work has ...
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This chapter examines American poet William Carlos Williams' engagement with surrealism. It explains that Williams is an important figure for many language writers but their reception of his work has often been at odds with the canonical representations of it. It compares Williams' The Great American Novel with André Breton's Soluble Fish, which is an example of a surrealist ‘false novel’. This chapter also suggests that the contributions of Williams, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler to the Blues magazine indicates that there is no clear boundary between the orthodox American followers of surrealism and its renegade dissidents.Less
This chapter examines American poet William Carlos Williams' engagement with surrealism. It explains that Williams is an important figure for many language writers but their reception of his work has often been at odds with the canonical representations of it. It compares Williams' The Great American Novel with André Breton's Soluble Fish, which is an example of a surrealist ‘false novel’. This chapter also suggests that the contributions of Williams, Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler to the Blues magazine indicates that there is no clear boundary between the orthodox American followers of surrealism and its renegade dissidents.
Christophe Wall-Romana
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780823245482
- eISBN:
- 9780823252527
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823245482.003.0014
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter provides a reading of another book that reprises the history of cinepoetry, all the way back to its pioneer: Stéphane Mallarmé. Published in 1971, The Ptyx Necklace is a literary ...
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This chapter provides a reading of another book that reprises the history of cinepoetry, all the way back to its pioneer: Stéphane Mallarmé. Published in 1971, The Ptyx Necklace is a literary treatment for a movie blending surrealism, magical realism and film noir, taking place in a made-up South American country ruled by a dictatorship. The imaginary film's McGuffin is a necklace made of a magical substance invented by Mallarmé and which appears as a tattoo on the skin of a young woman whom the dictators kidnap in order to confiscate it. Appealing equally to the history of French poetry (Maldoror and Mallarmé), the political repression in Kaplan's native Argentina and in Chili, visual tricks on the page, visual apparatuses in the narration, even an imaginary excerpt of a real film that André Breton admired, this book implements in writing the new theory of ‘polyvision’ in the cinema that Kaplan developed with her partner Abel Gance in the mid-1950s.Less
This chapter provides a reading of another book that reprises the history of cinepoetry, all the way back to its pioneer: Stéphane Mallarmé. Published in 1971, The Ptyx Necklace is a literary treatment for a movie blending surrealism, magical realism and film noir, taking place in a made-up South American country ruled by a dictatorship. The imaginary film's McGuffin is a necklace made of a magical substance invented by Mallarmé and which appears as a tattoo on the skin of a young woman whom the dictators kidnap in order to confiscate it. Appealing equally to the history of French poetry (Maldoror and Mallarmé), the political repression in Kaplan's native Argentina and in Chili, visual tricks on the page, visual apparatuses in the narration, even an imaginary excerpt of a real film that André Breton admired, this book implements in writing the new theory of ‘polyvision’ in the cinema that Kaplan developed with her partner Abel Gance in the mid-1950s.
Barbara Browning
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781781382998
- eISBN:
- 9781781383971
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781382998.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter situates Katherine Dunham within the context of several important figures of the Afro- and U.S.-American dance world while reflecting on the role of Haiti in research in ways that ...
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This chapter situates Katherine Dunham within the context of several important figures of the Afro- and U.S.-American dance world while reflecting on the role of Haiti in research in ways that resonate with the work of such dance figures. By placing Dunham alongside such figures as Ralph Lemon, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Maya Deren and André Breton, the chapter highlights the ‘obscenity’ and even ‘pathology’ that can infect the relationship of the U.S-American Self to the Haitian other. It also reveals the persistent and very similar ways in which Haiti has haunted the performing black body.Less
This chapter situates Katherine Dunham within the context of several important figures of the Afro- and U.S.-American dance world while reflecting on the role of Haiti in research in ways that resonate with the work of such dance figures. By placing Dunham alongside such figures as Ralph Lemon, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Maya Deren and André Breton, the chapter highlights the ‘obscenity’ and even ‘pathology’ that can infect the relationship of the U.S-American Self to the Haitian other. It also reveals the persistent and very similar ways in which Haiti has haunted the performing black body.
Paul Allen Miller
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199640201
- eISBN:
- 9780191811470
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199640201.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This chapter sketches a trajectory stretching from Simone de Beauvoir to Marguerite Duras, as mediated by Diotima’s speech in Plato’s Symposium. These texts stand as tokens for the intricate set of ...
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This chapter sketches a trajectory stretching from Simone de Beauvoir to Marguerite Duras, as mediated by Diotima’s speech in Plato’s Symposium. These texts stand as tokens for the intricate set of movements through which gender, philosophy, and the erotic have pursued their minutely choreographed dance from the dawn of the philosophical tradition to the deconstruction of Western metaphysics. This introduction, after an initial excursus that sketches the basic problematic, looks at: Simone de Beauvoir, for whom antiquity yields a moment of sublime transcendence analogous to the concepts of woman and liberté ; Hélène Cixous, who coined the term écriture féminine; and Marguerite Duras, whose novels and films elaborate a uniquely feminine style that looks forward to the textual practices of Cixous and Irigaray.Less
This chapter sketches a trajectory stretching from Simone de Beauvoir to Marguerite Duras, as mediated by Diotima’s speech in Plato’s Symposium. These texts stand as tokens for the intricate set of movements through which gender, philosophy, and the erotic have pursued their minutely choreographed dance from the dawn of the philosophical tradition to the deconstruction of Western metaphysics. This introduction, after an initial excursus that sketches the basic problematic, looks at: Simone de Beauvoir, for whom antiquity yields a moment of sublime transcendence analogous to the concepts of woman and liberté ; Hélène Cixous, who coined the term écriture féminine; and Marguerite Duras, whose novels and films elaborate a uniquely feminine style that looks forward to the textual practices of Cixous and Irigaray.
