Touched by surrealism : Reflections on a New Sensory Approach to Literature

Auteurs

  • Piet Devos

DOI :

https://doi.org/10.18352/relief.897

Mots-clés :

Benjamin Péret, haptics, surrealism, sensory perception, poésie

Résumé

In this paper, I discuss a new sensory approach to literature. Literature might be studied in order to trace the perceptual effects of cultural, political and technological transformations. First, I develop a historicizing method, which maps the sensory practices and discourses of a certain period and analyzes their appropriation in contemporary literature. Next, I demonstrate the fruitfulness of this approach by taking Surrealism as a case study, focusing on the role of touch or "haptics" in the works of Benjamin Péret. The concluding remarks will serve to hint at the new routes of research which this sensory approach discloses.

Biographie de l'auteur

  • Piet Devos
    Piet Devos works at the Department of European Languages and Cultures at the University of Groningen. His PhD thesis, which he defended in 2013, describes the correlation between the innovations of avant-garde poetry and the new subjectivistic understanding of sensory perception in the early twentieth century. Devos is currently preparing a postdoctoral research project, entitled "Vibrations, movement and pain", that aims to study the exchange of ideas between literature and science concerning the haptic effects of modern technology in the period 1880-1940.

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Publiée

24-12-2014

Numéro

Vol. 8 No 2 (2014): Apollinaire et la Grande Guerre

Rubrique

Articles – dossier thématique

Licence

Tous les articles dans RELIEF sont publiés en libre accès sous la licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Sous ce régime les auteurs conservent les droits d'auteur mais ils consentent à toute sorte d'utilisation de leur texte pourvu qu'il soit correctement cité.

Comment citer

« Touched by surrealism : Reflections on a New Sensory Approach to Literature » (2014) RELIEF - REVUE ÉLECTRONIQUE DE LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE, 8(2), p. 62–77. doi:10.18352/relief.897.