Andr Breton in Exile - 9781472485526

Taylor & Francis

Following the journey of Andr\u00E9 Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, into exile during the Second World War, the author of this book traces the trajectory of his thought and poetic output from 1941\u20131948. Through a close examination of the major \u2013 and as yet little studied \u2013 works written during these years, she demonstrates how Breton\u2019s quest for \""a new myth\"" for the postwar world led him to widen his enquiry into hermeticism, myth, and the occult. This ground-breaking study establishes Breton\u2019s profound intellectual debt to 19th-century Romanticism, its literature and thought, revealing how it defined his understanding of hermeticism and the occult, and examining the differences between the two. It shows how, having abandoned political action on leaving the Communist Party in 1935, Breton nonetheless held firmly to political thought, moving in his quest for a better world via Hermes Trismegistus across the utopian ideas of Charles Fourier and.