TESIS DOCTORAL A Resource Theory for Approaching Interpersonal Relationships in Percy Wyndham Lewis’ Fiction Intercambio de Recursos en la ficción de Percy Wyndham Lewis Melania Terrazas Gallego TESIS DOCTORAL A Resource Theory for Approaching Interpersonal Relationships in Percy Wyndham Lewis’ Fiction Intercambio de Recursos en la ficción de Percy Wyndham Lewis Melania Terrazas Gallego Universidad de La Rioja Servicio de Publicaciones 2003 Esta tesis doctoral, dirigida por el Doctor D. Carmelo Cunchillos Jaime, fue leida el 8 de octubre de 2001, y obtuvo la calificación de Sobresaliente Cum Laude por Unanimidad. Melania Terrazas Gallego Edita: Universidad de La Rioja Servicio de Publicaciones ISBN 84-688-4671-6 Intercambio de Recursos en la ficción de Percy Wyndham Lewis Melania Terrazas Gallego Dpto. Filologías Modernas Universidad de La Rioja Tesis Doctoral Curso 2000/2001 A Resource Theory for Approaching Interpersonal Relationships in Percy Wyndham Lewis’ Fiction Melania Terrazas Gallego Dpt. of Modern Languages University of La Rioja Ph.D. Dissertation Term 2000/2001 2 For Carmelo and Helmut, for their example and help. 3 __________________ List of Abbreviations ABR The Art of Being Ruled ACM America and Cosmic Man AG The Apes of God BB Blasting and Bombardiering CHM ‘The Code of a Herdsman’ CHCC Creatures of Habit and Creatures of Change: Essays on Art, Literature and Society, 1914-1956 CM The Childermass CYD Count your Dead: They are Alive! Or a New War in the Making. DOY Doom of Youth DPA The Demon of Progress in the Arts DPDS The Diabolical Principle and the Dithyrambic Spectator ES Enemy of the Stars FIB Filibusters into Barbary HC The Hitler Cult LF The Lion and the Fox LWOE Left Wings over Europe: Or, How to Make a War about Nothing. JATH The Jews, Are They Human? MF Malign Fiesta MDM Mrs. Dukes’ Million MG Monster Gai MWA Men without Art MMB The Mysterious Mr. Bull OGNG The Old Gang and the New Gang OWS One-Way Song P Paleface: The Philosophy of the `Melting Pot´ PNS ‘The Physics of the Not-Self’ RA Rude Assignment RL The Revenge for Love RP The Red Priest RQ The Roaring Queen SB Snooty Baronet SC Self-Condemned T Tarr 4 THA The Human Age TWM Time and Western Man VS The Vulgar Streak WA The Writer and the Absolute WB The Complete Wild Body Nota explicativa Debido al reglamento de estudios de doctorado de la Universidad de la Rioja, que contempla la redacción de tesis en idioma distinto al castellano, se ha incluido un resumen en español de cada uno los capítulos; asimismo, el índice, las conclusiones y todos los datos de la portada de la tesis están en lengua española. En virtud de todo ello, las páginas del índice y las de los contents no coinciden. 5 _____ Indice 1. Una visión enérgica y deformada de la realidad 15 2. Teoría de los Recursos: un estudio de la ficción de Lewis 58 3. Ficción Abstracta: Tarr 105 4. Ficción Mecánica: Snooty Baronet 181 5. Ficción Didáctica: The Vulgar Streak 268 6. Ficción Autobiográfica: Self-Condemned 341 Conclusiones 431 6 ________ Contents List of Abbreviations 4 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 10 1. A distorted shaping of an energetic mind 20 2. Resource Theory: A Study of Lewis’ Fiction 67 3. Abstract Fiction: Tarr 114 4. Mechanical Fiction: Snooty Baronet 189 5. Didactic Fiction: The Vulgar Streak 274 6. Auto-biographical Fiction: Self-Condemned 349 Conclusions 475 Bibliographic References 515 7 __________________ Acknowledgements Encouragement and assistance for this project has come from a variety of sources. My first acquaintance with Lewis’ work came in conversation with Carmelo Cunchillos, who has been over the last four years my principal sounding board for ideas about the writer. Later, Helmut Bonheim egged on me the idea of approaching Lewis’ fiction from a Resource Theory perspective. Their help and advice have been crucial in the last few years. To both, I wish to express my most sincere gratitude and affection. Other thoughtful advice has come from Susana Onega, Jose Angel García Landa, Pamela Rodríguez, Randall Stevenson, Paul Edwards and Dennis Brown. Their responses to the manuscript of my dissertation have been receptive to my argument and productive of suggestions that substantially have improved this thesis. Most of the material I have used was obtained from the British Library (London), Edinburgh University Library and Napier University Library (Edinburgh). I would like to express my gratitude to their staff members and, above all, to those of the University of La Rioja Library, as I could never have written this dissertation without their help. 8 I also like to communicate my most warm love to my closest friends and colleagues for their constant support and encouragement. My greatest debt, however, is to my family, who provided love, patience and understanding. An ethical system must, to have any meaning today, be tied to a theological system. The great chaos of values into which we have fallen makes this necessary. The spectacle of an ethical system adrift, wandering helplessly about in search of Authority, of a God, is not edifying: and it is absurd. And it is still more absurd to see it masquerading as a religion. (MWA, 170) My conception of the role of the creative artist is not merely to be a medium for ideas supplied him wholesale from elsewhere, which he incarnates automatically in a technique which (alone) it is his business to perfect. It is equally his business to know enough of the sources of his ideas, and ideology, to take steps to keep these ideas out, except such as he may require for his work. When the idea-monger comes to his door he should be able to tell what kind of notion he is buying, and know something of the process and rationale of its manufacture and distribution. (TWM, 10) The solution for him [the satirist] […] will be […] to bring human life more into contempt each day. […] It will, by illustrating the discoveries of science, demonstrate the futility and absurdity of human life. That will be its ostensible function. (MWA, 183) Four or five hundreds years ago it was the religious Absolute which was the writer’s problem. Today it is the political Absolute. […] But the place of honour, as I have never failed to recognize, is outside. Honours make any man suspect. At least of that I am blameless. (WA, 195-196) 9 ___________ Introduction This study is an attempt to induce understanding of the modern social views shaped by Percy Wyndham Lewis in his early abstract narrative Tarr (1918), his humorous novel Snooty Baronet (1932), his social satire The Vulgar Streak (1941) and his auto-biographical work of fiction Self- Condemned (1954). American Resource Theory of social exchange by Uriel G. Foa is the sociological framework proposed to explore the idiosyncratic relationship between interpersonal behaviour and resource exchange in these four creative worlds. This methodology defends that when individuals interact, exchanges of certain commodities such as material objects like a dress, money and equivalent forms of payment, a kiss, a newspaper, a congratulatory handshake or a punch in the nose take place. Thus Foa defines a resource as any item that can become the object of exchange among people. In this way, social interactions are seen as providing the means by which persons can obtain their needed resources from others, and thus, gain satisfaction, which 10 depends directly on the effect the outcome of these transactions has on them. Consequently, Resource Theory represents a broad conceptual framework that permits to understand interpersonal behaviour and the relationships conformed between individuals in everyday life. In this dissertation, we follow the results of these and other various hypotheses proposed by Foa, which were tested in laboratory experiments and field studies, in order to describe their impact on the attitude and social encounters of Lewis’ main dramatis personae in these four novels. Thus this study serves a double purpose: first, to discover the basic structure of their interpersonal relationships; second, to shed some new light on the numerous sociological and psychological implications derived from them, regarding varied aspects such as the ways of thinking of Lewis’ characters about behaviour in reciprocal roles, behaviour change, quality of life, or even Machiavellism. Following Lewis’ critic Munton (1997: 5), we think that the writing and thought of the artist has been misrepresented in the last twenty years by some scholars who have used the apparatus of research to mislead their readers about the nature of certain ideas. The implications based on the arguments of these scholars have been obnoxious in many occasions because they aim to fulfil their particular, often distorted, desires rather than to illuminate Lewis’ production. As a result, many recent critics and readers consider the artist as violent, anti-Semitic, misogynist and homophobic nowadays (1998). 11 Owing to these facts, this study follows Munton’s, yet with various modifications as no socio-literary research of this type has ever been undertaken in Lewis’ critic for studying his fiction. In our view, Foa’s framework is a very powerful methodology because it permits to say many novel things about the artist and his work, illuminates the nature of the interpersonal behaviour and relationships of his characters and enables to do justice to his energetic social observations. It is our contention that Lewis portrays the wrong ways in which economic and non-economic resources intertwine in modern Western society by experimenting with the English language in radical ways. Throughout the suggested fiction, the great majority of its citizenship is unable to function as competent members in their everyday dealings because their possession of resources, including love and status, fall below a minimum level.