A legendary figure within the Surrealist movement, Robert Desnos (1900-1945) has left a unique legacy as a poet of distinction, as a 'dormeur eveille revered by his fellow Surrealists, and as a free spirit par excellence. In celebrating Denos's unique creative voice, this book re-evaluates his prominence within and beyond the Surrealist movement, reappraises his status as a poet, and sheds new light on his contribution to the literary and cultural life of his age. The essays in the volume reflect the ongoing vitality and relevance of Desnos's poetry and the originality of his contribution to the various other forms of expression in which he excelled: Journalism, short stories, script-writing and song-writing. Desnos's extensive writings on art and artists, his active involvement in avant-garde film and his close associations with a number of renowned painters are also addressed. This fresh look at Denos's activities and contexts includes an interview with the artist Georges Malkine's daughter, Fern Malkine-Falvey, and a study of the memoirs of Desnos's wife, Youki. The volume closes with a rare collection of journalistic writings by Desnos which appeared in Le Soir in the late 1920s and have never appeared in print since their original publication.

When French theory went global in the late twentieth century its visual wing was understandably built on the work of its best-known thinkers, notably Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and Deleuze. However these names merely scratch the surface of a vibrant and innovative body of theory that has been produced in France over the last six decades. As well as a substantial interview with Sorbonne professor Bernard Vouilloux, this volume focuses on a range of theorists who usually sit under the academic radar, especially when outside of France: Arasse, Buci-Glucksmann, Damisch, Debray, Didi-Huberman, Heinich, Marin, Schefer and Stiegler. Also discussed is the important work on the visual by Baudrillard, Merleau-Ponty, Metz and Nancy. All of these thinkers are given introductory and exploratory treatment here, and are allowed to talk between themselves. By looking at a wider set of theories and theorists relating to the visual, the debates are able to cross-fertilize, with the chapters divided into five major areas: phenomenology and beyond; new art histories and genealogies; semiotics and methodologies; memory and the body; and the digital era. This volume brings together international scholars working within Visual Culture and Art History, to look in detail at a range of issues in French contemporary visual theory. The chapters cover the main media of visual culture: fine art, cinema, museology, photography, as well as the key philosophical coordinates of modern times - phenomenology, structuralism and semiology, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, sociology, aesthetics and Marxism. Throughout, the volume offers in-depth accounts of keywords, broad critical and historical contexts, and close attention to the language of visual theory. -- .

Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) is now recognised as a writer of international stature. The success of "Memoires d'Hadrien" (1951) and her election to the Academie franiaise in 1980 have created a worldwide audience for her work across the genres - novel, short story, essay, memoir and play - and for her published interviews and correspondence. By subverting some of Yourcenar's own accounts of her work and engaging with recent developments in the fields of art history and critical theory, Nigel Saint offers new directions in literary studies and visual culture studies. His reading of "Yourcenar" embraces both the historical novels and the lesser-known essays, and constructs an interdisciplinary theory for the analysis of visual experience as inflected by writing.