The Wild Body

Other stories in the collection are: Beau Sejour, The Cornac and His Wife, The Death of the Ankou, Franciscan Adventures, Brotcotnaz, Inferior Religions and The Meaning of the Wild Body.

Lewis objected to the futurist celebration of the machine age and was repelled by vague and indistinct form preferring structural clarity which is to be found in the vivid character descriptions, powerful metaphors and crystal-clear imagery of The Wild Body.

[2] Aligned with Ezra Pound, Lewis was editor, designer and author of the art manifesto magazine Blast that was at the centre of the Vorticism movement.

The Wild Body represents an evolution of the writing ability of Wyndham Lewis and a literary crystallising of the vorticist movement in modernist literature depicting the "itinerant acrobats and assorted eccentrics he encountered during his travels in Brittany"[2] in the opening decades of the 20th century and decanting the heady draught of modernism at its zenith moment.

In his exchange with the pseudo-American Frenchman the pugilism they play out is a satirical affront of nationalities and languages and it is conveyed in a semi-stream of consciousness style characteristically belonging to the modernist technique perfected by James Joyce and William Faulkner among others.

[4] Beau Séjour - Bestre - The Cornac and His Wife - The Death of the Ankou - Franciscan Adventures - Brotcotnaz - Inferior Religions - The Meaning of The Wild Body - Sigismund - You Broke My Dreams -