Preface [excerpt] This thesis is an analysis of the origins of surrealist ideas and art. I will attempt to answer the question about where Surrealism came from, what caused it, and who inspired it? I will examine the common theories on the origins of Surrealism and the evidence for them. It is popular among scholars of Surrealism to attribute the emergence of the movement to the First World War. It is my argument that the surrealist's literary predecessors had much more to do with the emergence of the...