Symbolism, Dada, Surrealisms

Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature, English and French at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is an Officer in the Palmes Académiques, a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her recent publications include Creative Gatherings: Meeting Places of Modernism (2019) and Mina Loy: Apology of Genius (2022), both published by Reaktion.

"An expert on Surrealism and the author of biographies of Proust, Woolf and James, Caws is renowned as a lively and insightful writer on art and literature. This collection brings together a selection of her articles on figures from Marcel Duchamp to Mina Loy." - Apollo"Symbolism, Dada, Surrealisms: Selected Writing of Mary Ann Caws gathers the literary critic and art historian’s writings on such artistic movements as symbolism, dadaism, and surrealism, including insights into works by Emily Dickinson, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Marcel Duchamp." - Daniella Fishman, Publishers Weekly"Now aged ninety, Caws fell in love with the genre early on, when completing her doctoral thesis on the "philosopher of surrealism," Gaston Bachelard. In the six decades since, as critic and translator, she has devoted her career to those rebellious early twentieth-century artists and writers, and to their antecedents and inheritors. Her formidable command of the history of the movement is on display in the essays gathered here . . . You’ll get an education here, for sure, not just in surrealism but in the incredibly diverse streams of thought the surrealists initiated or advanced, and which continue to shape art to the present moment." - New City Lit"I cannot overstate the gift and importance of these selected writings by Mary Ann Caws. In an age in which so many have found sustained looking, thinking, reading, and optimism difficult to maintain, here come these essays, to seduce us back into absorption, openness, and wonder. Caws’s intellect is such a rare and precious variety: rigorous and dense with all the freshness of open windows and swinging doors (as befits her subjects). I want to read every word she’s written here and take the stupendous journey she’s taken through life and art alongside her." - Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts"Mary Ann Caws is renowned for the wit, intelligence, and warmth of her writing and this collection makes it possible for us to explore a wide range of her essays. Revealing the extraordinary variety of her interests, the depth of her knowledge, and perhaps above all her love for the subjects she studies, these essays are not only an outstanding resource for scholars but a joy for everyone to discover or revisit, a cornucopia of insights and revelations." - Rosemary Lloyd, Rudy Professor Emerita of French, Indiana University, and Emeritus Fellow in French, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge