From Paris to Tlön: Surrealism as World Literature(Literatures as World Literature)

Best International Debut in 2017 (awarded by Romanian General and Comparative Literature Association) Most Prestigious Publication in the Humanities (awarded by the Senate of the University of Bucharest) Surrealism began as a movement in poetry and visual art, but it turned out to have its widest impact worldwide in fiction—including in major world writers who denied any connection to surrealism at all. At the heart of this book are discoveries Delia Ungureanu has made in the archives of Harvard’s Widener and Houghton libraries, where she has found that Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov were greatly indebted to surrealism for the creation of the pivotal characters who brought them world fame: Pierre Menard and Lolita. In From Paris to Tlön: Surrealism as World Literature, Ungureanu explores the networks of transmission and transformation that turned an avant-garde Parisian movement into a global literary phenomenon. From Paris to Tlön gives a fresh account of surrealism’s surprising success, exploring the process of artistic transfer by which the surrealist object rapidly evolved from a purely poetic conception to a mainstay of surrealist visual art and then a key element in late modernist and postmodern fiction, from Borges and Nabokov to such disparate writers as Gabriel García Márquez, Haruki Murakami, and Orhan Pamuk in the 21st century.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Introduction 1. Intellectual Networks and Surrealist Objects 2. On the Road to Establishment: Surrealism in the 1930s 3. Pierre Menard the Sur-realist 4. Surrealism on the New York Market 5. The Battle Over the New World 6. From Dulita to Lolita 7. The Ghosts of Surrealism in the World Novel Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Delia Ungureanu is Assistant Director of the Institute for World Literature and Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, USA, and Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature at the University of Bucharest, Romania.

Review :
What distinguishes this book from a great deal of other scholarly material is the way in which [Ungureanu] knits together the anecdotes and vignettes into a seamless overall picture of the spread of surrealist ideas between people. ... This is a book for a diverse readership. I imagine a reader new to surrealism who would be drawn into its world and set off afterward to find out more. There are enough passages of quoted surrealist writing and images included to tempt the new reader to a greater engagement. I can imagine a scholar of surrealism finding in it surprising new connections between familiar people and places. I can also imagine any researcher of modern and contemporary literature who might be inspired by the method to take an angled view of other literatures from a fresh perspective. From Paris to Tlön demonstrates a masterful knowledge of surrealism from its beginnings in France to its incorporation in literature and art in the present day. Ungureanu should be applauded for the extensive bibliography her study synthesizes and the insightful connections she makes between Breton, Dalí, and the many “surrealists” who came in their wake. ... Ungureanu’s study is ambitious in its breadth, meticulously researched, wide-ranging in its treatment of surrealism and its global impact, and a welcome addition for students and scholars alike interested in broadening their understanding of the genres, geographies, and international networks of the artists and writers associated with surrealism. Reading Delia Ungureanu’s recent study From Paris to Tlön: Surrealism as World Literature evoked for me the sensation of walking along a well-worn and familiar trail, only to look up and realize that at some point the path had somehow shifted, and that as a result, the landscape surrounding me was suddenly reworked in startling ways, new and fresh. In this pathbreaking study, Delia Ungureanu uncovers the circuitous routes by which a local Parisian movement became a global literary and artistic phenomenon. She unfolds the rivalries and the hidden debts of a gallery of larger-than-life figures, from André Breton and Salvador Dalí to Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, and Orhan Pamuk. With its compelling blend of cultural history, literary analysis, and scholarly detective work, From Paris to Tlön belongs in every surrealist’s flea market and every comparatist’s library. From Paris to Tlön provides unexpected and innovative perspectives on very widely read, widely taught, highly admired masterpieces by brilliant, cosmopolitan aesthetic stylists: Borges’s “Pierre Menard” and Nabokov’s Lolita. The impressive scholarship includes real detective work in primary materials, especially little magazines across the world, and makes previously unrecognized connections, providing valuable coverage of Surrealism in North and South America and making the figure of Salvador Dalí more comprehensible. Anyone reading the book will learn something new from it, even beyond what we would call its big ideas. Essential for libraries and powerfully valuable for advanced students. A scintillating piece of 'detective literary criticism,' as Ungureanu aptly defines the genre of her study, From Paris to Tlön adds significantly to our knowledge and understanding of surrealism as a global phenomenon. Perhaps the single most original contribution of this book is to have demonstrated the seminality of surrealism for a number of important writers not habitually associated with the movement (Nabokov and Pamuk, amongst others). Delia Ungureanu’s book demonstrates that a transnational approach to literary history can help us ground comparative readings of texts and reveal hidden intertextual links. From Paris to Tlön is a major contribution to our understanding of the circuits and networks through which surrealism became part of the world literature canon, and it is a model for further research on world literature as well as for literary history.