From muse to militant: Francophone women novelists and surrealist aesthetics

In 1924, Andr Breton launched the Surrealist movement in France with his publication of Manifeste du surralisme.He and his group of mostly male disciples, prompted by the horrors of World War I, searched for fresh formulas for depicting the bizarre and inhumane events of the era and for reviving the arts in Europe, notably by experimenting with innovative practices which included probing the unconscious mind.Women, if they had a role, were viewed as muses or performed only ancillary responsibilities in the movement.Their participation was usually in the graphic arts rather than in literature.However, in later generations, francophone women writers such as Joyce Mansour and Suzanne Csaire began to develop Surrealist strategies for enacting their own subjectivity and promoting their political agendas.Aside from casual mention, no critic has formally investigated the surreal practices of this sizeable company of francophone women authors.I examine the literary production of seven women from three geographic regions in order to document the enduring capacity of surrealist practice to express human experience in the postcolonial and postmodern era.From the Maghreb I analyze La Grotte clate by Yamina Mechakra and L'amour, la fantasia by Assia Djebar, and from Lebanon, L'Excise by Evelyne Accad.These novelists represent mental and physical trauma and the fragmentation of male/female relationships in times of combat.Clanire, cou-coup by Maryse Cond and iii Pluie et vent sur Tlume miracle by Simone Schwarz-Bart illustrate how Antillean literature reflects the oral traditions, supernatural beliefs and the heterogeneous cultural inheritance of its peoples.Both Jovette Marchessault's visionary novel, La mre des herbes, which draws upon her autotchonous heritage and lesbian orientation, and Anne Hbert's transgressive Les Enfants du sabbat, poignantly sabotage the paternalistic domination of the English-speaking Canadian government and the Catholic Church which relegated women to the role of reproductive automatons.I also examine feminist collaborative writing in Quebec to understand how it kindled an intellectual revival and a sophisticated field of literature and literary criticism.This dissertation charts the evolution of francophone women's involvement with Surrealism from its inception, when they played only the passive, objective role of Muse, to the middle of the Twentieth Century when women writers became active militants for equal rights while expanding the definition of surreal practice.iv Dedicated to Fred and Marian Roberson You always told me I could do "... anything I set my mind to."

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