The Project

Project title

La estética modernista a través de un prisma radical:
la visión satírica de Wyndham Lewis y su continuidad

Radicalism in Modernist Aesthetics:
The Relevance and Scope of Satire in the work of Wyndham Lewis

Reference number: BFF2002-02842
Funding institution: Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Plan I+D+I)
From: November 2002 - June 2006
Head of research: Professor Carmelo Cunchillos Jaime

Summary

This project is focused on the entire work of Wyndham Lewis, and pays particular attention to the ideological aspects of his thinking. At the same time it is concerned with those aspects of his work which either have not been explored by Spanish or foreign critics, or have been dealt with in equivocal or politically mediated ways. Since a great deal of Lewis's literary production remains dispersed in hard-to-find periodical publications, above all in the USA and Canada, we shall bring thse materials together for study and publication. An analysis of Lewis's short stories will be carried out to assess their relevance to modernist writing and to the short-story genre in general.

Further objectives of this project are to examine Wyndham Lewis's view of the Spanish Civil War, and his relationship with left- and right-wing writers who dealt with this conflict in their work. The productive but insufficiently-discussed post-war period (1945-1956) will also be explored.

We shall attempt to trace the relationship between Lewis and the work of Miguel de Cervantes, whether direct or intertextual. 

Our purpose is to examine Lewis's oeuvre in order to make an accurate assessment of its ideological tendencies, and to establish the scope of his political and social thinking.

Finally, we shall establish a connection between Lewis and particular British writers of the thirties to determine the relevance of his "aesthetic of the surface," the scope of his satire, and his ideas about the "de-humanization" of art, as well as the possible influences and echoes of his aesthetic in more recent writers.

Team Members

The team members of this research project are: Dr. Alan Munton (Plymouth University, England), Prof. Stan Smith (Nottingham Trent University, England) and Dr. Mª Mar Asensio Aróstegui, Prof. Carmelo Cunchillos Jaime, Dr. María Jesús Hernáez, Dra. Melania Terrazas Gallego and Dr. Carlos José Villar Flor (University of La Rioja, Spain)

Objectives

The objectives of the Project are as follows:

• To edit and publish a collection of essays that brings together in one volume all the results of research carried out by members of the project team that have been presented at international conferences and meetings. See information here.
• To disseminate the outcomes of other research by means of the publication of articles in international reviews and journals. See Outcomes.
• To write a doctoral dissertation entitled "Origen y pervivencia de la estética de Wyndham Lewis en la literatura británica del siglo XX".
• To design, write, illustrate and place online a Wyndham Lewis website that fully describes his work, shows the advances in the study of Lewis achieved by our research, and provides scholars with a research resource that is linked to other relevant sites.
• To prepare an anthology of the texts that best represent Wyndham Lewis's writing on aesthetics. See Writing.
• Recovery and publication on the website of unpublished or forgotten texts by Wyndham Lewis. See Unpublished texts.