Microcosm, Macrocosm: Barbara Hardy, Wyndham Lewis, Mrs. Gaskell, and Nineteenth-Century Narrative

Cut us off from Narrative, how would the stream of conversation, even among the wisest, languish into detached handfuls, and among the foolish utterly evaporate! [...]as we do nothing but enact History, we say little but recite it, nay, rather, in that widest sense, our whole spiritual life is built thereon. More than just illuminating The Childermass, Barbara's placing of Lucy's malign scheming alongside the Fall of Adam and Eve from Paradise means that from its beginning, Miltonic as well as Dantesque aspirations were central to Lewis's conception of his mock eschatological epic. [...]perhaps, no great fissure (as some commentators have argued) divides the first book of The Human Age from its sequels Monstre Gai and Malign Fiesta (both 1955). [...]at least one inhabitant of Milton, the northern town in Gaskell's novel, repeatedly views Hale's daughter as a foreigner. Since we shared broadly left-wing views, I was looking forward to a lively conversation about Lewis's critique of Soviet Communism and Italian Fascism when the sad news arrived that Barbara had died on 12 February 2016 at the age of 92.