Ezra Pound, Wyndham Leis, and Radical Modernism [Hardcover]

Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis developed a highly experimental art; they were attracted simultaneously to political programs remarkably backward in outlook--the autocracies of Fascist Italy and Germany. That paradox, central to the problematic achievement of Anglo-American modernism, is freshly addressed in this study. Here Sherry examines the influence of music and painting on literature, presents original research on European intellectual history, and proposes a new understanding of ideology as a force in the literary imagination. Following the example of continental ideologues, the English modernists use the material of aesthetic experience to prove truths of human nature, making art the basis for social values and recommendations. This sensibility enriches their work, shaping the varied textures of Pound'sCantosand the complex designs of Lewis's painting and fiction, but their mastery of avant-garde techniques endorses the authority of an antique state. Sherry returns their totalitarian synthesis of art and politics to its originating moment, following its trajectory from 1910 to the eve of World War II.

Vincent Sherry has the gift of never writing an uninteresting page inPound, Lewis, and Radical Modernism. It is impossible in a brief note to capture the richness of this lucidly, gracefully written book, which, among other things, is surely the most thorough and original study of the influence of Wyndham Lewis on Pound. --American Literary Scholarship

Admirably clear and direct....Distinguished not only by a sophisticated understanding of a neglected strain of modernist theory but also by careful scholarship that draws on important unpublished material. But the book's chief distinction is its challenging, and sometimes radically new, readings of Lewis's fiction and Pound's poetry. --Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Vincent Sherry's book raises one of the most important questions about mol