Maldoror And Poems

Insolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, it follows the experiences of Maldoror, a master of disguises pursued by the police as the incarnation of evil, as he makes his way through a nightmarish realm of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and prostitutes, lunatics and strange children. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Modigliani, Verlaine, André Gide and André Breton; it was hailed by the twentieth-century Surrealist movement as a formative and revelatory masterpiece.

Insolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, it follows the experiences of Maldoror, a master of disguises pursued by the police as the incarnation of evil, as he makes his way through a nightmarish realm of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and prostitutes, lunatics and strange children. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Modigliani, Verlaine, André Gide and André Breton; it was hailed by the twentieth-century Surrealist movement as a formative and revelatory masterpiece.

Andre Breton wrote that MALDOROR is the expression of a revelation so complete it seems to exceed human potential.' First published in 1869, MALDOROR is the work of a mysterious genius about whom little is known aside from his birth in Uruguay, 1846, and his early death in Paris, 1870. His writings, published under the pseudonym Comte de Lautreamont, bewildered his contemporaries but have since taken their place alongside other French classics of transgression such as Sade, Baudelaire, Rimbaud. A unique translation.'

Includes articles about translations of the works of specific authors and also more general topics pertaining to literary translation.

Maldoror is a long narrative prose poem which celebrates the principle of Evil in an elaborate style and with a passion akin to religions fanaticism. The French poet-critic Georges Hugnet has written of Lautréamont: "He terrifies, stupefies, strikes dumb. He could look squarely at that which others had merely given a passing glance." When first published in 1868-69, Maldoror went almost unnoticed. But in the 1890s the book was rediscovered and hailed as a work of genius by such eminent writers as Huysmans, Léon Block, Maeterlinck, and Rémy de Gourmont. Later still, Lautréamont was to be canonized as one of their principal "ancestors" by the Paris surrealists. This edition, translated by Guy Wernham, includes also a long introduction to a never-written, or now lost, volume of poetry. Thus, except for a few letters, it gives all the surviving literary work of Lautréamont.

Les Chants de Maldoror is a poetic novel (or a long prose poem) consisting of six cantos. It was written between 1868 and 1869 by the Comte de Lautreamont, the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse. Many of the surrealists in the early 1900s cited the novel as a major inspiration to their own works and Les Chants de Maldoror, and its protagonist Maldoror, have continued to fascinate people since its publication. The work revolves around the misanthropic character of Maldoror, a figure of absolute evil who is opposed to God and humanity, and has renounced all ties to conventional morality and decency. The iconoclastic imagery and tone is typically violent and macabre, and ostensibly nihilistic. Les Chants de Maldoror is considered to have been a major influence upon French Symbolism, Dada and Surrealism.

In Narrating the Slave Trade, Theorizing Community, Raphaël Lambert applies contemporary theories of community to works of fiction about the slave trade in order to both shed new light on slave trade studies and rethink the very notion of community.

The decade since the publication of Jean-Michel Rabaté's controversial manifesto The Future of Theory saw important changes in the field. The demise of most of the visible French or German philosophers, who had produced texts that would trigger new debates, then to be processed by Theory, has led to drastic revisions and starker assessments. Globalization has been the most obvious factor to modify the selection of texts studied. During the twentieth century, Theory incorporated poetics, rhetorics, aesthetics and linguistics, while also opening itself to continental philosophy. What has changed today? The knowledge that we live in a de-centered world has destabilized the primacy granted to a purely Western canon. Moreover, much of contemporary theory remains highly allusive and this is often baffling for students. Theory keeps recycling itself, producing authentic returns of basic theses, terms and concepts. Canonical modern theorists often return to classical texts, as those of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche. And now we want to know: what is new? Crimes of the Future explores the past, present and potential future of Theory.

Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 200 cross-referenced entries on the Surrealist Movement’s engagement with the realms of politics, philosophy, science, poetry, art and cinema.

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Animals appear not just as biological creatures, but as vehicles of meaning for human imagination, mind and culture. Animal life may form the basis for an animalizing imagination that can enhance our cultural, religious and aesthetic sensibilities. This imagination is rooted in the pre-modern affective relationship between shamans and their familiars, but can be tracked to our post-modern ecological crisis, where we can reclaim a totemic identification with animals as signifiers of a new ecological understanding.