The mistrust the surrealists had for the genre of the novel, and especially
for the realistic novel, is well known. Breton pointed out its deterministic psychology and the logic of cause and effect, which he thought led to character typification and to a rational chain of emotionally insignificant moments. Defenders of depth psychology and of the power of irrationality, the surrealists were not, however, resistant to the narrative prose they practiced, reinventing it in a wide-ranging and unusual manner.
The paper aims to highlight the originality of a few surrealist stories by Breton and by Dalí by the 1930s. Although the two surrealists chose different ways of experimentation, their prose is based on mechanisms of hybridisation, and constantly transgresses the boundary between description and narration, between autobiographical narrative and fictional narrative.
First of all, Breton's theoretical positions will be examined, as will some of his narrative practices
in Nadja. An exploration of the specificity of Dalí's approach and narrative writings will follow.
This comparison will allow us to focus on certain forms of narrative prose that mobilize radically
diverse semiotic systems and imageries. Breton develops a narrative prose by referring to an indexical paradigm and to a chain of elements that relies on the logic of the 'Marvel'. Dalí, on the other hand, builds on an analogical paradigm and on the logic of the 'alchemical transmutation', following in the footsteps of Huysmans, Jarry and even Roussel. Finally, we will emphasise that, beyond their specificities, these two types of surrealist experimentations led to the development of new narrative structures that take on mechanisms from the mythological story and that give a prelogical intelligibility to human behaviour.