This book presents important new research on Surrealism and the culture from which it arose. It offers a fresh interpretation of Surrealist art and literature based around the theme of simulation. As the book shows, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, simulation arose in a number of discrete contexts, in relation to hysteria and war neuroses, but more broadly it shadows the emergence of our concept of 'the unconscious'. Acknowledging simulation's relevance to Surrealism, this book argues, radically alters our understanding of their project and the terms in which one gauges its success or failure. It leads one to question the naïve assumption that automatic writing or drawing represent an authentic outpouring of the unconscious and gives renewed significance to a figure such as Salvador Dalí who embraced simulation and made it the basis of his art and aesthetic. It also points to one of the ways in which Surrealism chimes with a core preoccupation of contemporary art and theory.
