A SEMIOTIC STUDY OF L'IMMACULEE CONCEPTION BY PAUL ELUARD AND ANDRE BRETON

This book is a master's degree thesis written in 1981 under the mentoring of Professor Michael Riffaterre, at Columbia University. It is a semiotic, structuralist study of automatic writing in a surrealist book entitled L'Immaculée Conception, written by French surrealists Paul Eluard and André Breton. This book is divided in three parts:
1. The mimetic and semiotic text in L'Immaculée Conception
2. Literary devices in L'Immaculée Conception
3. Conclusion: L'Immaculée Conception as a new poetic genre
The first part studies the two levels of texts in L'immaculée Conception: the denotation, or level one and mimetic text, and the connotation, or level 2 and semiotic text.
The second part studies the literary devices such as word play, assonance and tropes that tie two physical texts this time (because written by two authors,) into one unified text.
The third part, and conclusion, studies the new literary genre created by automatic writing: a genre that overlaps poetry, fiction, and theater.