Abstract

Surrealism remains a minor field within 20 th century literary studies. This has meant that important feminist surrealists, such as Leonora Carrington, who themselves represent a minor field in surrealist criticism, are largely forgotten. Carrington and her feminist contemporaries take issue with those aspects of Surrealism that late-20 th century readers often also reject: its obscurity, misogyny, its wilful naïvetØ and refusal of accountability. Yet, it is by virtue of Carrington’s critique of Surrealism that the study of her writing can broaden the terms by which we recognize Surrealist texts and therefore, perhaps, increase interest in the movement as a whole. This broadening of critical interest in Surrealism is also made possible when we pay close attention to the earlier literary traditions on which it depends. Carrington’s “Down Below” challenges AndrØ Breton’s Nadja by contesting Breton’s dubious politics, but the text does this by re-engaging the same medieval tropes as him in order to show how Breton makes those tropes serve Surrealism’s masculinist agenda. Both texts borrow heavily from the visionary texts of the Middle Ages, such as those that record the experi- 1 ences of Margery Kempe, Christine the Astonishing and Elizabeth of Spaalbeek. Compared to the attention Nadja and “Down Below” receive from 20 th century critics, the visionary writing on which their structure and topoi depend are subject to a considerable amount of commentary from medievalists. Paying attention to the narrative, thematic and rhetorical correlations between these Surrealist texts and their medieval predecessors will broaden the context in which the former are considered. Such a comparison also enables Carrington’s work to take a more central place among that of her male contemporaries, since recognition of “Down Below”’s medieval tropes explicates the text’s crucially important dialogue with the Surrealist tradition as typified by Breton. The following study is not intended as an exhaustive interrogation of the texts and traditions to which it attends, given it draws together two very separate critical fields. I hope instead to raise each of the significant correlations between the Surrealist texts and their predecessors and show how these correlations operate as part of Carrington’s critique of Breton