Daniel Zamani

Tessel M. Bauduin

Victoria Ferentinou

This volume examines the relationship between occultism and Surrealism, specifically exploring the reception and appropriation of occult thought, motifs, tropes and techniques by Surrealist artists and writers in Europe and the Americas, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Its central focus is the specific use of occultism as a site of political and social resistance, ideological contestation, subversion and revolution. Additional focus is placed on the ways occultism was implicated in Surrealist discourses on identity, gender, sexuality, utopianism and radicalism.

In Search of the Marvellous

Surrealism, Occultism and Politics

Henrik Johnsson

Many modernist and avant-garde artists and authors were fascinated by the occult movements of their day. This volume explores how Occultism came to shape modernist art, literature, and film. Individual chapters examine the presence and role of Occultism in the work of such modernist luminaries as Rainer Maria Rilke, August Strindberg, W.B. Yeats, Joséphin Péladan and the artist Jan Švankmaier, as well as in avant-garde film, post-war Greek Surrealism, and Scandinavian Retrogardism. Combining the theoretical and methodological foundations of the field of Esotericism Studies with those of Literary Studies, Art History, and Cinema Studies, this volume provides in-depth and nuanced perspectives upon the relationship between Occultism and Modernism in the Western arts from the nineteenth century to the present day.

The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema

This book offers a new perspective on a long-debated issue: the role of the occult in surrealism, in particular under the leadership of French writer Andr� Breton. Based on thorough source analysis, this study details how our understanding of occultism and esotericism, as well as of their function in Bretonian surrealism, changed significantly over time from the early 1920s to the late 1950s.

Tessel M. Bauduin

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