L'image de la femme dans les "grande proses" d'André Breton

Woman is an ever-present image in the prose poems Nadja, L'amour fou and Arcane 17 by Andre Breton. While the image incorporates several autobiographical references, this is not the revelation. With textual recurrence forming a thematic, topical thread, the image is seen in its poetic, symbolic and mythical dimensions. Woman offers a surrealist poet a rhetorical gift. In these works the image of woman acquires symbolic value. It is identified with Nature in its cosmic, telluric reality, rooted in the unconscious in its oneiric reality. It is epiphanic in that it gives access to the Other's vision. To the poet it represents, to use Carl Jung's hermeneutic, the archetypal figure of the Anima. In its mythical dimensions, finally, the image calls forth the great visions of femininity: Muse, Sprite, Fairy, Elf, Virgin..