L’usage comparé du dictionnaire chez Francis Ponge et chez les surréalistes

Although there is an apparent incompatibility between surrealist writing and lexicographic writing, the surrealists ceaselessly created pastiche dictionaries, cultivating “unreason via the alphabet.” Ponge shares with the surrealists their rejection of conventional forms of language use, and indeed it is this rejection that fuels his desire to create his own dictionary. Setting out from a similar position of defiance toward customary language, Ponge and the surrealists will take paths that are sometimes convergent, sometimes divergent.