The Poetic Avant-garde: The Groups of Borges, Auden, and BretonThe Poetic Avant-Garde compares three avant-garde groups active in the era between the world wars: those surrounding Jorge Luis Borges, W.H. Auden, and Andre Breton. These groups were composed of poets and writers who made use of the avant-garde's characteristic modes of self-expression: the publication of small journals, unorthodox attention-getting tactics, and interaction with the mainstream press. However, their differing aesthetic, social, and political agendas illustrate the surprisingly broad range of avant-gardism in the interwar era. Strong looks at the choices these three groups made when their radical goals collided with the forces of social and political change in the 1920s and 1930s, highlighting the disparity between their rhetoric and their actual achievements. The book focuses on the avant-garde's struggle to reconcile contradictory imperatives: a desire to be radically new while also finding an audience. |
Contents
The Radical Conservatism of the Journals and Manifestos | 43 |
Who Led the Vanguardia? | 71 |
Borges and Sur | 98 |
The Mutable Myth of Audens 1930s | 123 |
The Struggle Over Value and Belief | 163 |
A Politics of Reception | 186 |
The Surrealists Search for Authenticity and Independence | 213 |
Surrealisms Divided Critics | 256 |
Comparing | 277 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic ambivalence André Breton Aragon Argentine vanguardia argues artistic Auden group Auden poets audience avant-garde avant-garde groups avant-garde movements belief Boedo Borges's bourgeois Buenos Aires Bürger canon Caws choices claims communist conflict conservative context contrast create critics Dada Dadaists Day Lewis decade decade's Desnos discourse early editors elite Eluard Empson English essays European example fascism French Girondo goals Grigson high culture human ideology images important intellectual issues Jorge Luis Borges journal Kermode La révolution surréaliste language leftist liberalism literary literature Lugones MacNeice manifesto Martín Fierro Martín Fierro 1969 metaphor modern moral myth Ocampo Oliverio Girondo Oxford poems poet's poetic poetry Poggioli political Proa problems propaganda published radical rejection repr Revista Martín Fierro revolution revolutionary rhetoric Roberts role Signatures social society Spender surrealism surrealists texts tion traditional truth ultraism vanguardia poets Verse W. H. Auden writers