Un Cadavre

The first pamphlet, arranged largely by André Breton and Louis Aragon, appeared in response to the national funeral of Anatole France.

France, the 1921 Nobel Laureate and best-selling author, who was then regarded as the quintessential man of French letters, proved to be an easy target for an incendiary tract.

The pamphlet featured an essay called Anatole France, or Gilded Mediocrity that scathingly attacked the recently deceased author on a number of fronts.

[3] The pamphlet Un Cadavre contained short essays by a number of those Breton criticized, many of whom he had formally expelled from the movement for reasons seemingly contrary to its goals, which in hindsight appear to be more a result of his famously imperious pride.

For example, according to the Second Manifesto, the prose writer Georges Limbour was expelled for "literary coquetry in the worst sense of the word,"[4] a reason that emphasizes Breton's rigid disdain for literature, as opposed to poetry.