Hulme, Thomas Ernest. (1883 - 1917).
L i f e
- a critic and later a war correspondent for The New Age
- enlisted in WW I, killed in action
W o r k
- promoter of Modernist poetry: founded Imagism, assisted by the birth of Vorticism
- a poet: x but: wrote few poems, mostly in the Imagist style
- a literary theorist: distinguished between Romanticism x Classicism
(a) Romanticism: a belief in the infinite in man and nature ("spilt religion")
(b) Classicism: a belief in human finitude and restraint ("dry hardness")
< influenced by the philosophy of Henri Bergson
> his ideas directly influenced Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
A Lecture on Modern Poetry (1908):
- delivered to the Poet's Club whose member and secretary he was
- advocates free verse
The Complete Poetical Works of T. E. Hulme (1912):
- refers to the five poems published half-mockingly and half-seriously by Ezra Pound in The New Age under this title
- the title symbolically argues for the virtues of Imagist minimalism
> "Autumn", "Mana Aboda", "Conversion", "Above the Dock", and "Embankment"
Quote
"Above the quiet dock in midnight, / Tangled in the tall mast's corded height, / Hangs the moon. What seemed so far away / Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play."
"Above the Dock" (1912).
Basics
(Photo: First World War com).
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Author
Thomas Ernest Hulme. (1883 - 1917). British. -
Work
Poet. Literary theorist. Inspired Imagism. -
Genres
Modernism. Imagism. Vorticism.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.