Wyndham Lewis, Tarr

Robert Carson (Texas A&M (Qatar))

Ed. by Andrew Radford, University of Glasgow
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.08: English Writing and Culture of the early Twentieth Century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Chris Baldick (Goldsmiths College, University of London), Peter Childs (Birmingham Newman University), Louise McDonald (Birmingham Newman University), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1918

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Wyndham Lewis’s

Tarr

is a satirical novel about English painter Frederick Tarr (based on Lewis) and German artist Otto Kreisler in early 20th-century Paris. Their rivalry and relationships with two women, Bertha Lunken and Anastasia Vasek, dramatize the hypocrisies of “bourgeois-bohemian” artistic society. Tarr expresses Lewis’s ideals of separating art and life, while Kreisler represents a debased German Romanticism.

Published in 1918 and revised in 1928, Tarr is a key work of English-language modernist fiction, Lewis’s disputes with other major modernist writers notwithstanding. The character of Kreisler also enacts Lewis’s criticisms of the work and influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, while also drawing from the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Published in 1918 and revised in 1928,

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3656 words

Citation: Carson, Robert. "Tarr". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 December 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1706, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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