The modernism of the ‘‘Men of 1914’’—that group of writers so named
by Wyndham Lewis that includes himself, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce
(and to which is added here T. E. Hulme as one in total continuity with its orientations)—has long posed a conceptual challenge in that an aesthetic praxis of radical
experimentation prevails in their work, but alongside a socio-cultural positioning
often thought to be ‘‘reactionary’’ in the extreme. There have been many attempts
throughout the history of modernist studies at reconciling these two apparently
contradictory tendencies, with varying results, none of which could be considered
definitive. The present article seeks to bring to bear the theoretical model of the
‘‘antimodern’’ articulated by Antoine Compagnon in his study of post-Revolution
French literary history as a framework for re-conceiving modernism’s relationship
to modernity. Understanding the ‘‘Men of 1914’’ to be a manifestation in the
Anglophone context of Compagnon’s ‘‘antimodern’’ enables us to see, without
oversimplification or unnecessary politicization, how the modernist aesthetic of
these authors, far from contradicting, actually follows from their socio-cultural
attitudes. This analytical lens can also provide a richer account of the unity of the
‘‘Men of 1914’’ as an authentic literary group largely by demonstrating more profound connections (on this very question of modernity) between Joyce and the other
members.

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• Modernism and the antimodern in the ‘‘Men of 1914’’