Description
Book SynopsisPresents an introduction to the writing of French social theorist Roger Caillois (1913-1978). Presenting several documents and drawing on interviews and unpublished correspondence, this book reveals Caillois' consistent effort to reconcile intellectual rigor and imaginative adventure.
Trade Review“Roger Caillois has remained relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. This superb selection of his essays, expertly translated, shows the full range of his thought and should place him next to Bataille and the Surrealists as a major intellectual figure in interwar and postwar France. Claudine Frank's general introduction and detailed commentaries on individual essays provide the necessary contexts for understanding this complex, often paradoxical thinker. A first-rate work that is sure to be of interest to all students of 20th-century French thought.”—
Susan Rubin Suleiman, author of
Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature”
The Edge of Surrealism is the Caillois in one volume that is so badly needed considering the very dispersed status of Caillois’s work and that no such volume exists in any language, not even in France. This selection is excellent, done by someone who not only knows thoroughly the production of the author but knows also what’s most relevant for our contemporary interests.”—
Denis Hollier, author of
Absent without Leave: French Literature under the Threat of WarTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
I. Theory and the Thirties, 1934—1939
Surrealism and Its Environs 1. Testimony (Paul Eluard) 59
2. The Praying Mantis: From Biology to Psychoanalysis 66
3. Letter to Andre Breton; Literature in Crisis 82
4. Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia 89
Biology and Myth 5. Review of
L'Homme, cet inconnu, by Dr. Alexis Carrel 107
6. The Function of Myth 110
7. The Noon Complex 124
8. For a Militant Orthodoxy: The Immediate Tasks of Modern Thought 130
Lucifer at the College of Sociology 9. Interview with Gilles Lapouge, June 1970 141
10. First Lecture: Sacred Sociology and the Relationships among “Society,” “Organism,” and “Being” 147
11. Dionysian Virtues 155
12. Aggressiveness as a Value 160
13. The Birth of Lucifer 166
14. Paris, a Modern Myth 173
15. Sociology of the Intellectual 190
II. Writing from Patagonia, 1940–1945
After the College 16. Preamble to the Spirit of Sects 205
17. Discussions of Sociological Topics: On “Defense of the Republic” 213
18. The Nature and Structure of Totalitarian Regimes 217
Treasure and Culture 19. Duties and Privileges of French Writers Abroad 235
20. Patagonia 240
21. The Myth of Secret Treasures in Childhood 252
22. The Situation of Poetry 262
23. Pythian Heritage (On the Nature of Poetic Inspiration) 268
III. Postwar Stances, 1946–1978
The Moralists 24. Loyola to the Rescue of Marx 279
25. Paroxysms of Society 284
26. Metamorphoses of Hell 298
Signs and Images 27. The Image 315
28. Fruitful Ambiguity 320
29. Surrealism as a World of Signs 326
Diagonal Science 30 The Great Bridgemaker 337
31. A New Plea for Diagonal Science 343
32. The Natural Fantastic 348
Roger Caillois Timeline 359
Notes 363
Bibliography 401
Index 415
