Synonyms
André Breton; Arcades Project; Louis Aragon; Omen; Paris; Revolution; Surrealism; Walter Benjamin
This article has three aims. It discusses some of the tendencies within surrealism; then it considers its relation to the city. It discusses Walter Benjamin’s interest in surrealism and relates that to his work on the city, especially in the Arcades Project, and so it becomes also a discussion of Paris, where surrealism was so influential.
Introduction to Surrealism
In his essay “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia” (1929), Benjamin names those who created the movement: André Breton (1896–1966), who had begun with Dada as an anti-art movement, Louis Aragon (1897–1982), Philippe Soupault (1890–1990), Robert Desnos (1900–1945), and Paul Eluard (1895–1962).
In his Manifesto of Surrealism(1924), Breton defines it as “psychic automatism […] by which one proposes to express […] the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any...
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References
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Tambling, J. (2018). Benjamin, Surrealism, and Paris. In: Tambling, J. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_82-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_82-1
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