Featuring essays by leading scholars of surrealism, this book offers the first sustained critical inquiry into the multifaceted writing of women associated with surrealism, and highlights howthis oeuvre intersects with and contributes to contemporary debates on gender, sexuality, subjectivity, otherness, anthropocentrism, and the environment.

Surrealist women’s writing: A critical exploration is the first sustained critical inquiry into the writing of women associated with surrealism. Featuring original essays by leading scholars of surrealism, the volume demonstrates the extent and the historical, linguistic, and culturally contextual breadth of this writing. It also highlights how the specifically surrealist poetics and politics of these writers’ work intersect with and contribute to contemporary debates on, for example, gender, sexuality, subjectivity, otherness, anthropocentrism, and the environment. Drawing on a variety of innovative theoretical approaches, the essays in the volume focus on the writing of numerous women surrealists, many of whom have hitherto mainly been known for their visual rather than their literary production. These include Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Kay Sage, Colette Peignot, Suzanne Césaire, Unica Zürn, Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, and Rikki Ducornet.

IntroductionAnna Watz 1 ‘The dung beetle’s snowball’: the philosophic narcissism of Claude Cahun’s essay-poetryFelicity Gee 2 Identity convulsed: Leonora Carrington’sThe House of Fear and The Oval LadyAnna Watz 3 Recasting the human: Leonora Carrington’s dark exilic imaginationJeannette Baxter 4 Colette Peignot: the purity of revoltMichael Richardson 5 Suzanne Césaire’s surrealism: tightrope of hopeKara M. Rabbitt 6 Kay Sage alive in the worldKatharine Conley 7 Outside-in: translating Unica ZürnPatricia Allmer 8 Ithell Colquhoun’s experimental poetry: surrealism, occultism, and postwar poetryMark S. Morrisson 9 Leonor Fini’s abhuman familyJonathan P. Eburne 10 ‘Open sesame’: Dorothea Tanning’s critical writingCatriona McAra 11 Magic language, esoteric nature: Rikki Ducornet’s surrealist ecologyKristoffer Noheden Bibliography Index