The introduction to the volume situates surrealism in relation to theories and historiographies of the novel, noting ways in which the surrealist novel both fits into and diverges from these, and addresses tensions and contradictions generated by the surrealist use of the novel form. It provides a historical context to the development of the surrealist novel across the globe, and discusses the ways in which the surrealist novel has influenced literary forms and styles such as the nouveau roman, the postmodern, as well as the magical realist novel. Moreover, the introduction provides a rationale for the structure of the volume, and a general discussion of notable themes, techniques, and formal specificities of the surrealist novel.

This chapter examines the emergence of a dream aesthetic in the orbit of Surrealism. While André Breton’s “Manifesto of Surrealism” (1924) and Louis Aragon’s “Wave of Dreams” (1924) point to the dream as a catalyst for a new kind of imaginative freedom, free of moral or aesthetic judgement, it was in Communicating Vessels (1932) that Breton brought the dream into direct correspondence with urban wandering and objective chance. In the process, Breton identified how the manifest content of his dreams drives an affective and sensorial attunement to people and places in the urban street, revealing the cathectic forces driving our aleatory engagement with the material world, and thereby assigning the dream a more critical, indeed, political cast. The second part of the chapter turns to the striking affinities between the dream and film uncovered by Surrealism, via the symbolic mapping of the Freudian dream in Buñuel and Dalí’s Un chien andalou (1929) and the melodramatic tension between symbolic objects and unconscious bodily movement in Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943).

The principle and technique of collage as the juxtaposition of disparate elements is generally considered to be the fundamental model of twentieth-century avant-garde art forms. As structure rather than representation it ranges from Picasso’s cubist works to Rauschenberg’s combines; and within Surrealism, from Joan Miro’s pasted papers to George Hugnet’s “poèmes découpés.” This chapter argues that verbal and visual collage is at the heart of Surrealism’s revolutionary project, the means of contesting the established order, by imaginatively reconfiguring signs to produce new meanings – poetic, erotic, or satirical. Various questions regarding collage are explored. What are its limits? Can the concept embrace Dalí’s assemblages, film montage, Breton’s display of objects, or examples of citation, parody, or pastiche? Can it be defined as an experimental form rather than an aesthetic object, a dynamic process rather than a finished product? If collage is considered a collective activity, can it be identified with intertextuality? Finally, the chapter examines critical interpretations of collage by the surrealists themselves and explores examples of postsurrealist collage.

The introductory chapter traces Surrealism’s critical legacy across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. From its initial emergence out of Dada in 1924, Surrealism became a defining critical and creative concept, and not only for the avant-garde movement penned in its name. It inspired a range of critical enterprises and creative practices, including: Walter Benjamin’s anthropological investigation of the everyday material world; the politics and aesthetics of a number of anticolonial enterprises; James Clifford’s investigations of the ethnographic ambitions of dissident surrealism; the political events of May ’68; the October group’s recalibration of Greenberg’s aesthetic formalism; and, more recently, Surrealism’s influence on new materialism, thing theory, animal/human studies, affect theory, and a plethora of contemporary participatory art movements. Described by Maurice Blanchot as “a brilliant obsession,” Surrealism continues to exert a profound rethinking of the relationship between art, politics, and everyday experience.