A collection of both of the Manifestoes of Surrealism written by Andre Breton in 1924 and 1929. The pocket book size to make the two manifestoes more accessible in print without being part of some collected works.

Despite surrealism's celebration of the subconscious and eschewal of reason, the movement was nevertheless concerned with definitions. Andre Breton included a dictionary-style entry for surrealisme in his 1924 Manifeste du surrealisme and later explored juxtapositions of the absurd and the mundane in the 1938 Dictionnaire abrege du surrealisme. To the mountain of literature that seeks to organize the far-reaching intellectual movement, Aspley (honorary fellow, Univ. of Edinburgh) adds this handy volume that organizes the breadth of surrealism into concise entries on artists, writers, artworks, and themes. A chronology highlights events that sparked the surrealist imagination, activities of formal surrealist groups, and exhibitions. An introductory essay and extensive bibliography are included. One of the few English-language reference sources about surrealism published in the last decade, Aspley's dictionary is useful for quick access to key terms and biographies. For a book devoted to a movement characterized by arresting visual imagery, the lack of illustrations is annoying. Even Rene Passeron's 1978 Phaidon Encyclopedia of Surrealism (CH, May'79) reprints artworks in color. For a richly illustrated and comprehensive history, see Gerard Durozi's History of the Surrealist Movement (CH, Nov'02, 40-1316). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates through graduate students. Lower-division Undergraduates; Upper-division Undergraduates; Graduate Students. Reviewed by A. H. Simmons.

The Language of Surrealism explores the revolutionary experiments in language and mind undertaken by the surrealists across Europe between the wars. Highly influential on the development of art, literary modernism, and current popular culture, surrealist style remains challenging, striking, resonant and thrilling – and the techniques by which surrealist writing achieves this are set out clearly in this book. Stockwell draws on recent work in cognitive poetics and literary linguistics to re-evaluate surrealism in its own historical setting. In the process, the book questions later critical theoretical views of language that have distorted our ideas about both surrealism and language itself. What follows is a piece of literary criticism that is fully contextualised, historically sensitive, and textually driven, and which sets out in rich and readable detail this most intriguing and disturbing literature.

Surreal Beckett situates Beckett‘s writings within the context of James Joyce and Surrealism, distinguishing ways in which Beckett forged his own unique path, sometimes in accord with, sometimes at odds with, these two powerful predecessors. Beckett was so deeply enmeshed in Joyce’s circle during his early Paris days (1928 - late 1930s) that James Knowlson dubbed them his "Joyce years." But Surrealism and Surrealists rivaled Joyce for Beckett’s early and continuing attention, if not affection, so that Raymond Federman called 1929-45 Beckett’s "surrealist period." Considering both claims, this volume delves deeper into each argument by obscuring the boundaries between theses differentiating studies. These received wisdoms largely maintain that Beckett’s Joycean connection and influence developed a negative impact in his early works, and that Beckett only found his voice when he broke the connection after Joyce’s death. Beckett came to accept his own inner darkness as his subject matter, writing in French and using a first-person narrative voice in his fiction and competing personal voices in his plays. Critics have mainly viewed Beckett’s Surrealist connections as roughly co-terminus with Joycean ones, and ultimately of little enduring consequence. Surreal Beckett argues that both early influences went much deeper for Beckett as he made his own unique way forward, transforming them, particularly Surrealist ones, into resources that he drew upon his entire career. Ultimately, Beckett endowed his characters with resources sufficient to transcend limitations their surreal circumstances imposed upon them.

This book collects together the two most vital "automatic" texts Surrealism. Breton's prefatory essay The Automatic Message relates this technique to the underlying concepts and aesthetic of the Surrealist movement. The Magnetic Fields (1919) was the first work of literary Surrealism and is thus one of the foundations of modern European thought and writing. This authorised translation is by the poet David Gascoyne, himself a member of the group and a friend of both authors. The Immaculate Conception (1930) traces the interior and exterior life of man from Conception and Intra-Uterine Life to Death and The Original Judgement. The central section is a celebrated series of "simulations" of various types of mental instability.

In Surrealist sabotage and the war on work, art historian Abigail Susik uncovers the expansive parameters of the international surrealist movement’s ongoing engagement with an aesthetics of sabotage between the 1920s and the 1970s, demonstrating how surrealists unceasingly sought to transform the work of art into a form of unmanageable anti-work. In four case studies devoted to surrealism’s transatlantic war on work, Susik analyses how artworks and texts by Man Ray, André Breton, Simone Breton, André Thirion, Óscar Domínguez, Konrad Klapheck, and the Chicago surrealists, among others, were pivotally impacted by the intransigent surrealist concepts of principled work refusal, permanent strike, and autonomous pleasure. Underscoring surrealism’s profound relevance for readers engaged in ongoing debates about gendered labour and the wage gap, endemic over-work and exploitation, and the vicissitudes of knowledge work and the gig economy, Surrealist sabotage and the war on work reveals that surrealism’s creative work refusal retains immense relevance in our wired world.