Book contents
- A History of the Surrealist Novel
- A History of the Surrealist Novel
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Marvellous Beginnings
- II Transgression and Excess
- III Science, Alchemy, Nature
- IV Transnational Surrealism
- Chapter 16 Nature and Surrealism in the Latin American Novel of the Tropics
- Chapter 17 Surrealism, Existentialism, and Fictions of Blackness
- Chapter 18 Social Critique in the Japanese Post-War Surrealist Novel
- Chapter 19 The World of the Surrealist Novel
- Chapter 20 Feminist-Surrealism in the Contemporary Novel
- Afterword
- Index
Chapter 20 - Feminist-Surrealism in the Contemporary Novel
from IV - Transnational Surrealism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2023
- A History of the Surrealist Novel
- A History of the Surrealist Novel
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I Marvellous Beginnings
- II Transgression and Excess
- III Science, Alchemy, Nature
- IV Transnational Surrealism
- Chapter 16 Nature and Surrealism in the Latin American Novel of the Tropics
- Chapter 17 Surrealism, Existentialism, and Fictions of Blackness
- Chapter 18 Social Critique in the Japanese Post-War Surrealist Novel
- Chapter 19 The World of the Surrealist Novel
- Chapter 20 Feminist-Surrealism in the Contemporary Novel
- Afterword
- Index
Summary
This chapter offers a reassessment of the contemporary feminist legacies of the late surrealist novel. Historically, scholarship has reached a moment where the late surrealist novels of Leonora Carrington (1917–2011) and Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012) now operate as active intertexts. Such legacies have become manifest in a new generation of contemporary novelists who identify as feminist: Chloe Aridjis (b. 1971), Kate Bernheimer (b. 1966), Ali Smith (b. 1962), and Heidi Sopinka (b. 1971). A range of feminist-surrealist stylistics in the contemporary novel become apparent. Self-reflexive framing devices such as transcription (daydreaming) and lecturing (epistemology) enable protagonists to take control of their voice or destiny in Bernheimer’s The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold (2001), Aridjis’s Book of Clouds (2009), and Smith’s Autumn (2016). Moreover, haunted texts and found objects serve as catalysts and/or disruptive plot devices in Sopinka’s The Dictionary of Animal Languages (2018) and Aridjis’s Asunder (2013) and Sea Monsters (2019). These novels mimic the surrealist techniques and the elderly characters found in Tanning’s Abyss/Chasm (1977/2004) and Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet (1974). A comparative, intergenerational perspective ensures the historical authenticity of the surrealist novel, and acknowledges a critical inheritance of fictional, revisionary accounts of the avant-garde movement.
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- A History of the Surrealist Novel , pp. 348 - 363Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023