110 History of English Literature - from 1900-2000

1. PAPER NO:110 HISTORY OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE –FROM
1900-2000
Prepared by- Mayuri Pandya

2. Personal Information
• Name: Mayuri Pandya
• Roll no :14
• Email id:pandyamayuri0610@gmail.com
• Submitted to: Department of English, MKBU.
• Topic: Surrealism

3. • Meaning of Surrealism
• “a type of 20th-century art and literature in which unusual or impossible things are
shown happening”. (Cambridge meaning)
Surrealism, movement in visual art and literature, flourishing in Europe between
World Wars I and II. Surrealism grew principally out of the earlier Dada movement,
which before World War I produced works of anti-art that deliberately defied
reason; but Surrealism’s emphasis was not on negation but on positive expression.
• The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the
destruction wrought by the “rationalism” that had guided European culture and
politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of World War I.
According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André
Breton, who published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924, Surrealism was a means
of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that
the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in
“an absolute reality, a surreality.”
• Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, Breton saw the
unconscious as the wellspring of the imagination. He defined genius in terms of
accessibility to this normally untapped realm, which, he believed, could be attained
by poets and painters alike.(Britanica)

4. Characteristics
• Dream-like scenes and symbolic images
• Unexpected, illogical juxtapositions
• Bizarre assemblages of ordinary objects
• Automatism and a spirit of spontaneity
• Games and techniques to create random effects
• Personal iconography
• Visual puns
• Distorted figures and biomorphic shapes
• Uninhibited sexuality and taboo subjects
• Primitive or child-like designs.

5. Two Type of Surrealism
• 1. Automatism
Have you found yourself doodling nonsense while speaking
on the phone? That act of making art without thinking is
called Automatism. In psychology, ‘automatism’ refers to
involuntary actions and processes that are not under the
control of the conscious mind–dreaming, breathing, blinking.
Automatism played a very important role for Surrealist
techniques. Spontaneous (automatic) writing, painting, and
drawing; free association of images and words; and
collaborative creation though games like the Exquisite Corpse
meant to suppress the conscious mind to liberate the
subconscious without any further need to investigate
meaning.

6. • 2.Veristic surrealism
Veristic Surrealists were deeply interested in
interpreting dreams as channels for unknown feelings
and desires. Their artworks did not begin with a
preconceived result. Instead, dreams and subconscious
associations between images, text and their meanings
became a direct source for their artwork. Artists like
Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Dorothea
Tanning allowed the images of their subconscious to be
undisturbed so that meaning could be understood
through analysis. They linked images between the
abstract spiritual realities and the real forms of the
world. For them, their paintings were a metaphor to an
inner reality.

7. • Major surrealist artist
Jean Arp
• Max Ernst
• André Masson
• René Magritte
• Yves Tanguy
• Salvador Dalí
• Pierre Roy
• Paul Delvaux
• Joan Miró.
• Women artist
• Dorothea Tanning
• Kay Sage
• Leonora Carring
• Oppenheim
• Eileen Agar

9. Video

10. Influence of Surrealism in Indian Art
Surrealism, in contrast to the art movement in Europe, certainly showed
influence on Indian visual-arts contemplation since the time immemorial.
Iconography in Indian art epitomizes an inimitable panorama of
surrealistic metaphors. Indian epics, folklores, ceremonies and the wide
selection of different folk arts which proliferate as an incarnate practice,
depict the unusual image of the artist’s mind.
Over the past few decades, an effort has been made by various
distinguished and upcoming artists to track the influence of surrealism in
contemporary art. The artists who have created surreal Indian paintings
are Sanat Kar, Ganesh Pyne, Shuvaprasanna, Jogen Chowdhury, Partha
Pratim Deb, Asit Mondal, Dinanath Pathy, P.R.Narvekar and Dipali
Bhattacharya, to name a few.

11. Ganesh Pyre
Sanat Kar

12. Surrealism in LITERATURE
• SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by
which one proposes to express—verbally, by means of
the written word, or in any other manner—the actual
functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the
absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from
any aesthetic or moral concern.
• ENCYCLOPEDIA. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the
belief in the superior reality of certain forms of
previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of
dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to
ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to
substitute itself for them in solving all the principal
problems of life.

13. Famous work and Author
• André Breton, Le Manifeste du Surréalisme
(Manifesto of Surrealism), 1924.
• Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell ,1873.
• André Breton, Nadja, 1928.
• Mary Ann Caws, ed., The Milk Bowl of
Feathers, 2018.
• Leonora Carrington, The Complete Stories of
Leonora Carrington, 2017.

14. Work CITATION
• Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Surrealism". Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 Dec. 2021,
https://www.britannica.com/art/Surrealism. Accessed 15 April 2022.
•
Craven, Jackie. “Surrealism - The Movement and Artists Who Defied Logic.” ThoughtCo, 19 August
2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-surrealism-183312. Accessed 15 April 2022.
• Diamond, Jonny. “Your Surrealist Literature Starter Kit ‹ Literary Hub.” Literary Hub, 8 April 2019,
https://lithub.com/your-surrealist-literature-starter-kit/. Accessed 15 April 2022.
Patial, Neeti. “Historical Origins of Surrealistic Art and its Impacts on Indian Paintings |
IndianArtIdeas.” Indian Art Ideas Indian Art Ideas, https://indianartideas.in/blog/indian-
art/historical-origins-of-surrealistic-art-and-its-impacts-on-indian-paintings. Accessed 15 April
2022..
•
SURREALISM | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary.” Cambridge Dictionary, 6 April 2022,
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/surrealism. Accessed 15 April 2022.
•
Tanning, Dorothea. “What is Surrealism?” Curated Tastes, 12 April 2020,
https://curatedtastes.art/2020/04/12/what-is-surrealism/. Accessed 15 April 2022

15. • Thank you
Thank
You