Download or read book Surrealism written by Anna Balakian and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1959, Surrealism remains the most readable introduction to the French surrealist poets Apollinaire, Breton, Aragon, Eluard, and Reverdy. Providing a much-needed overview of the movement, Balakian places the surrealists in the context of early twentieth-century Paris and describes their reactions to symbolist poetry, World War I, and developments in science and industry, psychology, philosophy, and painting. Her coherent history of the movement is enhanced by her firsthand knowledge of the intellectual climate in which some of these poets worked and her interviews with Reverdy and Breton. In a new introduction, Balakian discusses the influence of surrealism on contemporary poetry. This volume includes photographs of the poets and reproductions of paintings by Ernst, Dali, Tanguy, and others.