‘A Large Mouth Shown to a Dentist’

By sustaining a key metaphor from dentistry, Michael Shallcross investigates Chesterton’s parodying of T. S. Eliot and the latter’s prevarications and anxieties about self-image. With the image of the agape mouth of Modernism displaying decayed and unsightly protrusions, Chesterton, engaging in textual games, plays on the theme of abjection all the way to The Waste Land. The theme is augmented and given depth by the osmotic presence of figures such as E. C. Bentley for Chesterton and Wyndham Lewis for Eliot. Doing so highlights Eliot’s snobbism and elitist attitudes and Chesterton’s subtle critique of Modernist etiquette and ‘politeness’.