Maria Ollivere
Royal Holloway, UK
Foaming Ecstasy: Wyndham Lewis and Lawrence's travel writing
Wyndham Lewis's response to the work of D. H. Lawrence is, undoubtedly, symptomatic of his own cantankerous intolerance for primitivist ideologies. His critique of Lawrence's travel sketches centers on an essential dislike of what amounts in Lewis's view to a spiritual tourism of sorts, embodying yet another of the many false solutions to the cultural dilemma of their time.
This paper will focus on the less obvious influence Lawrence's work had on Lewis, and on how the latter developed a dynamic of negation and differentiation against Lawrence's widely popularized philosophy that helped consolidate his individual critical standpoint. Beyond the better known judgments Lewis issued against Lawrence's spiritualism we find Lewis's later texts, where parodies of Lawrence's style and stance are crucial for Lewis's broader critique to effectively asserts itself.
I suggest an underlying reliance on the Lawrencean ethic becomes increasingly evident as Lewis's moves from the open debate of his cultural commentary in the late 1920s, to the more sedate spirit of later fiction. Finally, I will explore how the critical neglect of Lewis's travel writing has prevented the crucial similarities and genuine congeniality between these two authors to surface, bringing one of contemporary criticism's most solid assumptions to task.