About the Book
What are the forms in which the avant-garde returns after the Second World War? How does the literary avant-garde re-invent itself without losing its affinity with historical avant-garde currents such as surrealism and futurism?
This book explores the international relevance of the concept of neo-avant-garde for the study of post-war literary innovations covering North American, Latin American, Caribbean, Austrian, French, British, Belgian, Dutch and German cases. Each of the twenty-one newly commissioned chapters combines theoretical reflection with practical analysis. Together, they provide a multi-faceted account of diverse group and trends, such as the New Realists, Black Arts Movement, Labris and the Vienna Group. They also focus on a wide range of authors, like Pierre Alferi, Amiri Baraka, Konrad Bayer, Mario Bellatín, Kamau Brathwaite, and Anna Kavan. In addition, they pay attention to specific techniques, including erasure, lyricisation, and montage, and to specific genres such as comic books, experimental fiction, and visual poetry.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction: Neo-Avant-Garde, Why Bother?
PART I: Concepts, Genres & Techniques
1. Theodor Adorno, Peter Bürger, and Oswald Wiener or How to Apply Neo-Avant-Garde Theory to Neo-Avant-Garde Texts, Thomas EDER
2. Despite Straight lines: Josef Albers, Concrete poetry and Temporal Relations, Vincent BROQUA
3. Multi-Faceted Images of Reality: Montage in Documentary Literature from the Long 1960s, Lieselot DE TAEYE
4. Foundists and Erasurists, Michel DELVILLE
5. In Praise of Hybrid Purity: Nomadism and Pierre Joris, Jan BAETENS
6. Enigmatic and revealing: Lucienne Stassaert’s neo-avant-garde short story collection Verhalen van de jonkvrouw met de spade (1964), Nele JANSSENS
7. Sound Poetry in France: A Neo-Avant-Garde?, Gaëlle THÉVAL
8. Surrealism Old and New in Three Generations of the Prose Poets: the Case of the Low Countries, Hans VANDEVOORDE
9. Uneven Developments: Bande Dessinée, Rear-Guard and Neo-Avant-Gardes, Benoît CRUCIFIX
10. Differentiating the Return of the Real: Towards an Interdisciplinary Concept of the Neo-Avant-Garde, Sabine MÜLLER
Part II:. Movements and Authors
11. "A Riot is the Language of the Unheard": Neo Avant-Garde Poetic Uprisings in the Era of the Black Arts Movement, Antonia RIGAUD
12. The Neo-Avant-Garde in Latin America: The Case of Mario Bellatin, Ilse LOGIE
13. Sycorax’ Revenge: Kamau Brathwaite and a Caribbean Version of the Neo-Avant-Garde, Christine PAGNOULLE
14. "Belonging nowhere?": Labelling British Experimental Women’s Fiction
of the Long Sixties, Hannah VAN HOVE
15. Constraint and Rule: Oulipo and the Neos, Jean-François PUFF
16. A Third Term? Avant-Garde on the Fence in France since the 1990s, Jeff BARDA
17. The Austrian Post-War Anomaly: Konrad Bayer’s Montage the head of vitus bering and the Category of the "New", Roland INNERHOFER
18. Surrealism in Post-War Vienna, Laura TEZAREK & Christian ZOLLES
19. Images of the Real: Generic and Medial Hybridity in Peter Weiss’ The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman, Inge ARTEEL
20. From Zero to Neo: Ivo Michiels, Book Alpha and the Neo-Avant-Garde, Lars BERNAERTS
21. Flemish Hybridity: The Magazine Labris (1962-1973) and the Neo-Avant-Garde, Dirk DE GEEST & Bart VERVAECK
Index
About the Author :
Bart Vervaeck is Professor of Dutch Literature and Narrative Theory at the University of Leuven. He has published books on Dutch postmodern fiction (Het postmodernisme in de Nederlandse en Vlaamse roman 2015) and on the Dutch neo-avant-garde (Op zoek naar een mens 2008).His publications include the Handbook of Narrative Analysis (Nebraska University Press, 2005; 2nd edn, 2019), co-authored with L. Herman, and Stories and Minds: Cognitive Approaches to Literary Narrative (Nebraska University Press, 2013), co-edited with L. Bernaerts, D. De Geest and L. Herman. He co-ordinates ENAG (European Neo-Avant-Gardes), an international Research Network sponsored by FWO (the Flemish Foundation for Scientific Research), which brings together university scholars from Brussels, Ghent, Leuven, Liège, Paris, and Vienna.
Review :
Neo-Avant-Gardes provides nuanced critical perspectives on the resurgent avant-gardes active in Europe and elsewhere globally during the "long 1960s". With particular focus on literary intermedia and experimental writing, the authors set out new directions in the theory and history of the neo-avant-gardes, beyond previous dismissals and defenses.
