A study on Nadja and on the montage technique

• Grant number: 18/10450-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2018
• End date: August 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Alexandre Bebiano de Almeida
• Grantee: Guilherme de Almeida Gesso
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

It is prevailing in the critical fortune of Surrealism the association of the literature made by this avant-garde movement with the dream universe and the psychoanalytic method. This conception, almost consensual (even diffused by common sense) is largely due to thestatements of the surrealist artists themselves or of theorists and critics who are contemporaries of the movement. However, an essay by Theodor Adorno, "Looking Back onSurrealism" (1956) disagrees with this established reading: the critic seeks to highlight the formal procedures which are the basis for the surrealist literature, with particular emphasis on the montage, and thus lessening the psychoanalysis' importance in the artistic production from the movement. In the wake of Adorno's suggestion, this project aims to analyze André Breton's book, Nadja (1928), in order to describe to what extent this autobiographical narrative implements the montage technique - and what are the aesthetic effects and consequences of this choice. To accomplish such examination we will recur, on one hand, to the studies of the great theorist of the montage, the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, who in The Film Sense (2002) closely investigated the use of the montage not only in movies, but also in literature; on the other hand, we will take as base the studies of German literary critic,Peter Bürger, whose analytical effort painstakingly unfolds the structural features of somesurrealist works.