Relational Structures in Wyndham Lewis’s Fiction: Complexity and Value
Melania Terrazas
Universidad de la Rioja
In her book Melania Terrazas analyses Wyndham Lewis's novels of the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, tracking their depictions of the idiosyncratic relationship between interpersonal behaviour and social interactions. Resource Theory of social exchange is the introductory sociological framework proposed for exploring this relationship and for structuring Lewis’s vast critical oeuvre. However, due to its numerous limitations in undertaking the discussion of economic questions and matters like intellectual integrity and love, the theories of more flexible and more radical thinkers like Arnold, Berman, Blau, Durkheim, Gergen, Giddens, Goldmann and Simmel, among others, are used.
Terrazas excavates the incorrect ways in which economic and non-economic resources intertwine in Lewis’s portraits of modern Western society; reflects upon the radical ways in which he recreates how technological, scientific, political, economic and social doctrines dehumanised the rules of practice that governed interpersonal behaviour and relations in intimate and large institutions; clarifies the patterns of conduct and interpersonal relationships whose peculiar appearance and outcome respond to his view of the world and of human relationships. Terrazas’ readings of Lewis’s reveal that he is a fascinating writer and a perceptive social critic.
ISBN 9783895868078. LINCOM Studies in Language & Literature 01. 248pp. 2006.
