The Modern Mediatrix: Medieval Rhetoric in André Breton’s Nadia and Leonora Carrington’s “Down Below”

Surrealism remains a minor field within 20th century literary studies. This has meant that important feminist surrealists, such as Leonora Carrington, who themselves represent a minor field in surrealist criticism, are largely forgotten. Carrington and her feminist contemporaries take issue with those aspects of Surrealism that late-20th century readers often also reject: its obscurity, misogyny, its wilful naïveté and refusal of accountability. Yet, it is by virtue of Carrington’s critique of Surrealism that the study of her writing can broaden the terms by which we recognize Surrealist texts and therefore, perhaps, increase interest in the movement as a whole.