Metaliterature in the Work of Russell Edson.

This paper examines Russell Edson's metaliterary texts. Since almost no previous attempts have been made to consistently systematize them, a diachronic approach has been adopted. Edson's collections, leaving aside his two novels and four short plays, are taken as the corpus for this work. Accordingly, his surrealist ars poetica is also analyzed in the light of his own dreamlike short texts, whether prose poems or short-short stories. It is concluded that the American writer constructed his apparently nonsensical works on the basis of a highly sophisticated rationalism insomuch as they refer to their own processes of composition while still preserving most of their surrealist features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]