Perpetual Motion: Studies in French Poetry from Surrealism to the Postmodern

Perpetual Motion is a collection of studies which aims to offer new sightlines between surrealism, the age of André Breton (1896-1966), and the postmodernism of such contemporary poets as Pierre Alferi (1963-). For Sheringham, a sense of motion and plasticity flows through the last century of French poetry, and reveals itself through themes of rhythm, inspiration, sensation, love, colour and the city, both as an imaginative space and an incitement to new identities and ways of being in the world. It has been a rich century indeed for French poetry, and, in addition to Breton and Alferi, talents as singular yet also as representative as Victor Segalen, Guillaume Apollinaire, Raymond Queneau, Jules Supervielle, Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Roubaud, Michel Deguy and Jacques RÉda all make appearances in these pages.

Michael Sheringham was Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford from 2004 to 2015, and was Fellow of All Souls College and a Fellow of the British Academy. His book Everyday Life (2006), a literary and philosophical investigation into the elusive nature of the quotidian, is widely considered a classic of modern scholarly writing.