T. E. Hulme and the Ideological Politics of Early Modernism
Author(s): Henry Mead
Drawing on a range of archival materials, this book explores the writing career of the poet, philosopher, art critic, and political commentator T.E. Hulme, a key figure in British modernism. T.E. Hulme and the Ideological Politics of Early Modernism reveals for the first time the full extent of Hulme's relationship with New Age, a leading radical journal before the Great War, focussing particularly on his exchange of ideas with its editor, A.R. Orage.
Through a ground-breaking account of Hulme's reading in continental literature, and his combative exchanges amongst the bohemian networks of Edwardian London, Mead shows how 'the strange death of Liberal England' coincided with Hulme's emergence as what T.S. Eliot called 'the forerunner of… the twentieth century mind'. Tracing his debts to French Symbolism, evolutionary psychology, Neo-Royalism, and philosophical pragmatism, the book shows how Hulme combined anarchist and conservative impulses in his journey towards a 'religious attitude'. The result is a nuanced account of Hulme's ideological politics, complicating the received view of his work as proto-fascist.
Review(s):
“Poet and critic T. E. Hulme (1883–1917), whose life was cut short by WW I, explored tensions among individuals, society, and religion and between the essential chaos of the world and the human need for order—tensions that would bedevil modernists and continue to plague thinkers today. Hulme's was an evolving, not static, thought, making him hard to categorize and his influence difficult to specify. Mead (Teesside Univ., UK; Bergen Univ., Norway) negotiates the changing framework and belief around and within Hulme's writings during the decade before his death, showing the evolution of his thinking and his deft handling of what he saw as the necessity of belief in an arbitrary world, a position that might seem contradictory to a less flexible mind. Mead also places Hulme firmly within the changing intellectual context of his time, both in England and on the continent. The breadth of Mead's scope makes this an invaluable study for anyone attempting to understand the problems of modernism, either in its infancy or as it began to be replaced by newer attitudes and thoughts in a much-altered world. Part of the "Historicizing Modernism" series, this book helps readers do exactly that. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.” – A. J. Barlow, New York City College of Technology (CUNY), USA, CHOICE
ISBN: 9781472582027