'Outsiders and Impersonators': a critical and creative exploration of the surrealist fiction of Leonora Carrington, Ithell Colquhoun and Unica Zurn

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This research comprises two interrelated elements: a critical thesis exploring the distinctive ways inwhich the above writers' work, situated as an 'outsider' version of Surrealismi, offers new insights regardingits canon and philosophy; and an experimental novel which will extend these insights via practice-based investigation.The fiction will provide opportunities to conduct formal experiments suggested by the critical enquiry andgenerate insights which would remain speculative without this praxical testing ground.The outcomes will be an original contribution to research in the field of Surrealism and an experimentalfiction functioning as artefact and reflexive evidence; emerging out of the synthesis of critical readingand writing.Cultural Context:Women were marginalised at the inception of Surrealism but participated in its early experiments. Their'assigned' role as conductors of 'mental electricity'ii or as 'muses' is well documented. Yet there is onlyone female signature on either of the two Surrealist Manifestos of the 1920's.iii'Outsider', denoting that 'internationally recognised category of self-taught art'iv, seems useful as a termto account for elements of this project. Though the work of the three women is frequently described assurrealist, it often doesn't fit comfortably with notions of creativity set out in surrealism's manifestos.The proposed critical investigation will interrogate conventional understandings of Surrealism, and willquestion whether these women writers are best understood as surrealists, or whether they call for a destabilisingof critical conventions, hence a re-framing of how they are situated in the canon.Research Context:Criticism of the fiction of surrealist women is relatively limited. Katherine Conley's work (2008) representsthe most significant and concerted focus, analysing surrealist women's writing in relation to parallelmale equivalences (often by Breton and Soupault), and tending towards a re-visioning of the conceptof selfhood for women. Much discussion elsewhere stages a critique of the implicit misogyny of the SurrealistProjectv. Whilst this is essential work, so far there is scant consideration of the ways these femaleartists on their own merit offer new insights into the creative process and represent genuinely fresh material,outside the literary and artistic taxonomy. Methodology:The novel will be shaped by the discoveries made during analysis of the fiction and will, reflexively, distila set of technical ideas which did not previously exist in relation to Surrealism.In my critical analysis of the selected texts, the following strategies will be traced:- Fiction as an autobiographical refraction- Literal masking of character within text- Journeys in disguise- Anti-anthropomorphic manifestations- Mythic re-figurings- Impersonation of genre archetypes- Impersonation of the surrealist project itself