"Any other path": Spain, surrealism and texts less considered.

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to identify surrealist texts in Spain during the 1920s and 30s that were based on the French model as conceived by Andre Breton's group. It first discusses the historicity of surrealism as it was received on the Peninsula and the influence it exerted as an avant-garde movement. It does this by outlining briefly the literary environment of the period, above all in terms of the books and magazines from France that were read and reviewed and the extent to which sunrealist ideas were discussed, as reflected in lesser-known Spanish journals. The study diverts focus away from the works commonly cited as examples of "Spanish surrealism," such as Lorca's Poeta en Nueva York and Alberti's Sobre los angeles," which are shown to be at odds with surrealist concepts. Rather, the dissertation concentrates on the following texts: Emilio Prados's Seis estampas para un rompecabezas (1925), Jose Maria Hinojosa's La flor de California (1928), Luis Bunuel's early poems and prose poems (1925-1929), Federico Garcia Lorca's "poemas en prosa," also known as "narraciones" (1927-1928), Salvador Dali's pre-Paris texts (1927-1929) and Agustin Espinosa's Crimen (1934). Special attention is paid to what Michael Riffaterre has called the "automatism effect" and its characteristic semantic incompatibilities as well as to the subversion of literary convention. Examples of this latter are the undermining of genre, metaphor, allegory and so on. Despite some limitations which the dissertation discusses, the interpreted works are evidence of Spanish writers heeding Breton's assertion in the 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism: "I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.".