The Poetics of Mockery 
Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God and the Popularization of Modernism

Mark Perrino

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MHRA Texts and Dissertations 40

W. S. Maney & Son Ltd for the Modern Humanities Research Association

1 January 1995

ISBN: 978-1-839546-78-5 (Hosted on this website)

Open Access with doi: 10.59860/td.b48c5ea

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The Poetics of Mockery reconsiders Wyndham Lewis’s adversarial role in the modernist movement through a close reading of his prodigious satire of 1920s cultural politics. It presents a new interpretation of The Apes of God as a Menippean satire, with attention to its style, characterization, allegory, and historiography, and to Lewis’s polemics of the period.

Previous studies have emphasized Lewis’s ‘external method’ of visual narration and the personal attacks on the London art world. This one delineates also the rhetorical and parodic elements in his mechanistic caricatures of literary impression and its proponents, besides the theory of participation and the ‘player’ behind his schizoid image of the modern subject. The study reinterprets the apprenticeship plot as a carnivalesque discrowning based on the primitive themes of the shaman and the scapegoat. It explores the ways in which the discursive ‘broadcasts’ — on the social exploitation of a subjectivist aesthetic, publicity as imposture, cultural levelling — are dramatized in the sado-masochistic bond between impresario and naïf and in the contradiction of carnival institutionalized. Lewis is shown using his rivals’ ‘mythic method’ to implicate the avant-garde itself in nascent mass culture.

The study includes an analysis of the scandal surrounding Lewis’s private edition of The Apes and the defence of ‘non-moral’ satire presented in his subsequent pamphlet Satire & Fiction. Drawing upon unpublished manuscripts and correspondence, it demonstrates how Lewis’s own devious publicity campaign re-enacted the crux of the novel and epitomized his conflicts with his contemporaries.

This book, originally published in paperback in 1995 under the ISBN 978-0-901286-52-9, was made Open Access in 2024 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.

Contents:

i-ix, 1-171

The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God and the Popularization of Modernism
Mark Perrino
Complete volume as single PDF

The complete text of this book.

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i-ix

The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God and the Popularization of Modernism - Front Matter
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c599321

Contents, Preface, and a list of Texts and Abbreviations.

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1-24

Chapter 1: The Modern Carnival: Wyndham Lewis and the Nineteen-Twenties
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c6a875e

1.1. The Bête Noire of Modernism; 1.2. The Critical Context; 1.3. Literary Affinities; 1.4. The Twenties.

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25-52

Chapter 2: Imitation-Man: The External Method and the Poetics of Mockery
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c6c3965

2.1. The External Method; 2.2. Apery; 2.3. The Puppets; 2.4. Narrative Sarcasm.

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53-86

Chapter 3: Life as a Game: Two Geniuses and Their Patron
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c7ba70c

3.1. Daniel Boleyn; 3.2. Some Minor Apes; 3.3. Horace Zagreus; 3.4. The Broadcasts and Pierpoint; 3.5. Shamanism; 3.6. The Clown.

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87-115

Chapter 4: The Colossal Mechanical Trap: High Apery and Its Discontents
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c8c9aef

4.1. The Finnian Shaws; 4.2. The Conspiracy Theory; 4.3. Archie Margolin; 4.4. The Pierpointians; 4.5. The Scapegoat.

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116-38

Chapter 5: Crooked Mirrors: The Demise of Innocence and Old England
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c04f8b6

5.1. The Vanish; 5.2. The General Strike; 5.3. Mirror and Shadow.

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139-54

Chapter 6: Marketing Insults: The Arthur Press and Scientific Satire
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c15ecfd

6.1. The Scandal; 6.2. ‘Satire and Fiction’; 6.3. Lewis the Pamphleteer.

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155-61

Chapter 7: Conclusion: Madness and the Veil of Art
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c26dd5c

Although the foregoing analysis of The Apes’ reception shows Lewis in an unflattering light, it furthers an understanding of the novel’s preoccupation with rhetorical contests, dissimulation, and plots. In focusing on the external method and the destructive satire, in the long run ‘Satire and Fiction’, lightly revised for Men Without Art, may have hurt more than helped a critical appreciation of the novel. Lewis took various positions on the nature and social function of satire from the twenties onwards.

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162-71

The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God and the Popularization of Modernism - End Matter
Mark Perrino
doi:10.59860/td.c37d1a3

Bibliography, Index, and back cover.

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Bibliography entry:

Perrino, Mark, The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God and the Popularization of Modernism, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 40 (MHRA, 1995)

First footnote reference: 35 Mark Perrino, The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God and the Popularization of Modernism, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 40 (MHRA, 1995), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Perrino, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Perrino, Mark. 1995. The Poetics of Mockery: Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God and the Popularization of Modernism, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 40 (MHRA)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Perrino 1995: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Perrino 1995: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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