Wyndham Lewis Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Robert T. Chapman

Critical Essay by Robert T. Chapman

SOURCE: "Natures, Puppets and Wars," in Wyndham Lewis: Fictions and Satires, Vision Press, 1973, pp. 47-67.

In the following essay, Chapman examines the development of Lewis's style and themes in his early stories and their later revision in The Wild Body, pointing out that Lewis's early socio-psychological concerns were later abandoned for a greater interest in more abstract philosophical ideas.

Looking back on his first published writings, Lewis recalled their genesis in his "long vague periods of indolence" in Brittany:

The Atlantic air, the raw rich visual food of the barbaric environment, the squealing of the pipes, the crashing of the ocean, induced a creative torpor. Mine was now a drowsy sun-baked ferment, watching with delight the great comic effigies which erupted beneath my rather saturnine but astonished gaze. . . . The characters I chose to celebrate—Bestre, the Cornac and his wife, Brotcotnaz, le père...
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