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Anthology of Black Humor

Field	Value
name	Anthology of Black Humor
image	Cover art for the book Anthology of Black Humor by Andre Breton.jpg
image_size	220px
caption	First edition
editor	André Breton
title_orig	Anthologie de l'humour noir
translator	Mark Polizzotti (1997)
country	France
language	French
genre	Anthology
published	1940, 1947,1966 (Éditions du Sagittaire) January 1, 2001 (City Lights Publishers)
media_type	Print (paperback)
pages	356 pp (English edition)
isbn	978-0-872-86321-7
congress	AC

The Anthology of Black Humor () is an anthology of 45 writers edited by André Breton. It was first published in 1940 in Paris by Éditions du Sagittaire and its distribution was immediately banned by the Vichy government. It was reprinted in 1947 after Breton's return from exile, with a few additions. In 1966, Breton, "having resisted the temptation to add more names", published the book again and called this edition "the definitive".

The anthology not only introduced some until then almost unknown or forgotten writers, it also coined the term "black humor" (as Breton said, until then the term had meant nothing, unless someone imagined jokes about black people ). The term became globally used since then. The choice of authors was done entirely by Breton and according to his taste which he explains in the Foreword (called The Lightning Rod, a term suggested by Lichtenberg), a work of great depth (Breton was the main theoretician of the Surrealist movement) that starts with contemplating Rimbaud´s words "Emanations, explosions." from Rimbaud's last poem The barrack-room of night : Dream. The authors, each introduced by a preface by Breton and represented by a few pages from their writings, are sorted chronologically. The book is still in print. It was translated into several languages; into English by Mark Polizzotti in 1997.

Contents of the 1966 "definitive" edition

The anthology contains the following excerpts, each introduced by a commentary by Breton:

Jonathan Swift: Directions to Servants, A Modest Proposal, Meditation Upon a Broomstick; a few aphorisms;
D.-A.-F.de Sade: Juliette
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: selected aphorisms.
Charles Fourier: L'éléphant, le chien...
Thomas De Quincey: On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts
Pierre François Lacenaire
Petrus Borel: Marchand et voleur est synonyme
Christian Dietrich Grabbe
Edgar Allan Poe: The Angel of the Odd
Xavier Forneret
Charles Baudelaire
Lewis Carroll: Lobster Quadrille
Villiers de l'Isle-Adam: Le Tueur de cygnes (from Tribulat Bonhomet)
Charles Cros
Friedrich Nietzsche: Letter to Jacob Burckhardt (also published in The Portable Nietzsche)
Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont): excerpts from Maldor and Letters (Also published in Maldor and the Complete Works of the Comte de Lautreamont)
Joris-Karl Huysmans
Tristan Corbière: The Litany of Sleep (also published in the Centenary Corbiere)
Germain Nouveau
Arthur Rimbaud: excerpt from A Heart under a Cassok (also published in Completed Works, Selected Letters)
Alphonse Allais
Jean-Pierre Brisset
O. Henry
André Gide: Prometheus' Lecture (also published in Marshlands and Prometheus Misbound)
John Millington Synge
Alfred Jarry: The Debraining Song; and excerpts from Ubu Enchained, Act I, Scene II Le Champ de Mars (also published in The Ubu Plays)
Raymond Roussel: excerpt from Impressions of Africa
Francis Picabia
Guillaume Apollinaire: Dramaturgy and Meetings (from The Poet Assassinated and Other Stories)
Pablo Picasso
Arthur Cravan
Franz Kafka: excerpt from The Metamorphosis
Jakob van Hoddis
Marcel Duchamp: aphorisms (also found in The Writings of Marchel Duchamp
Hans Arp: Bestiary with no First Name
Alberto Savinio: Introduction to a Life of Mercury (from Le lives of the Gods)
Jacques Vaché
Benjamin Péret: Death to the Pigs and other writings
Jacques Rigaut
Jacques Prévert
Salvador Dalí
Jean Ferry
Leonora Carrington: The Debutante
Gisèle Prassinos
Jean-Pierre Duprey

Others works excerpted include: Louis Aragon's 1928 Treatise on Style. Freud's 1928 Humor from International Journal of Psychoanalysis 9 1-6 (republished in Collected papers of Sigmund Freud vol.5).

References

Breton, André. "Anthology of Black Humor".
[http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Chambree.html Mag4.net Arthur Rimbaud - Derniers Vers : La Chambrée de Nuit]
Lezard, Nicholas. (21 February 2009). "From the sublime to the surreal". The Guardian.
"Guy Debord's Letters".
"Les évasions imaginaires.: André Breton « Anthologie de l'humour noir »".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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