French Literature Reviews - 2026
The Global Arts of Surrealism
Other Literary Studies
Review published in Acta Fabula (March 2023, vol. 24, no. 3): "Southern Surrealisms: A Transversal Perspective," by Wolfgang Asholt.
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Andrea Gremels
Die Weltkünste des Surrealismus. Netzwerke und Perspektiven aus dem Globalen Süden
Wallstein Verlag, Series: Konstanz University Press, 2022
444 p., ISBN 978-3-8353-9145-1
Die Weltkünste des Surrealismus examines the multilateral exchanges and global arts of surrealism from a transmedial, transcultural, and transregional perspective.
In the first half of the 20th century, surrealism was not merely exported from Europe to the non-European world; rather, it was anticipated, debated, and dynamically shaped through ongoing interactions across these regions. Networks emerged among surrealist artists and writers in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean, developing independently of centralized European direction. Consequently, Eurocentric concepts of world literature and world art fall short. To adequately account for these surrealist world arts, Andrea Gremels proposes an anticentric framework for global artistic relations, drawing specifically on postcolonial and transcultural perspectives.
Drawing on a rich and diverse corpus of surrealist works spanning literature, film, photography, and the visual arts, Andrea Gremels demonstrates how exchange dynamics within and alongside the Global South give rise to poetic and poetological ethnographies, syncretic cosmovisions, and anticolonial resistance. She also shows how core surrealist motifs—such as the marvelous, the sacred, and the uncanny—are expanded and transformed. At the same time, the author broadens the horizons of transcultural philology, advocating for a history of literature and art that transcends national and linguistic boundaries. This approach redraws not only the map of surrealism, but the map of world literature as well.
Andrea Gremels is a research associate at the Institute for Romance Languages and Literatures at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Her research focuses on Latin American cultures and literatures, postcolonial literary theory, transcultural studies, conceptions of world literature, and inter- and transmedial practices.
Surrealism emerged in the early 20th century as an avant-garde movement centered in Paris, yet its influence quickly permeated international artistic circles. As noted in Die Weltkünste des Surrealismus, surrealism was not merely exported from Europe but was shaped through multilateral exchanges and networks among artists and writers in Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Readers interested in the history of global modernism and the evolution of avant-garde aesthetics across these regions may find this study of transcultural networks relevant.
Die Weltkünste des Surrealismus examines global surrealism from a transmedial, transcultural, and transregional perspective, arguing that Eurocentric concepts of world literature fall short. The work analyzes a diverse corpus of literature, film, photography, and visual arts to demonstrate how surrealist motifs were transformed within the Global South. By advocating for a history of art that transcends national and linguistic boundaries, the text addresses the development of poetic ethnographies, syncretic cosmovisions, and anticolonial resistance.
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