Surrealism is one of the most influential cultural movements of the twentieth century. While its contribution to the art and literature of the century is well known, its relation to the development of intellectual ideas has only recently become a matter of serious investigation. This book details the surrealist engagement with major themes in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. It draws together essays from the whole history of surrealism to illustrate the tenacity and consistency with which the surrealists treated themes of psychological reality and the construction of identity, cultural communication, freedom and poetry. Drawn mostly from French and Spanish surrealist journals, the collection gathers together a wide range of texts dating from the 1920s up to the late 1990s, none of which has ever been translated into English before.