T. E. Hulme
T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher whose writing helped shape Imagism and modernist aesthetics.
Imagism: A modernist poetry movement that favored precise images, concise language, and freedom from conventional meter. Hulme’s advocacy of hard, clear images helped prepare the movement’s principles.
Ezra Pound: An American poet and critic who became a central organizer and promoter of modernist literature. Pound developed Imagism after engaging with ideas and poets in Hulme’s circle.
The New Age: A British weekly review that published writing on politics, literature, and culture from 1907 to 1938. Hulme published influential critical essays in this periodical.
A Lecture on Modern Poetry: A 1908 lecture by T. E. Hulme presenting a break with conventional poetic forms and Romantic assumptions. It sets out Hulme’s early case for a new, concise kind of poetry.
Aesthetic theory: The philosophical study of art, beauty, taste, and aesthetic experience. Hulme’s writing links theories of poetic form to claims about reality and human nature.
Romanticism: An artistic and intellectual movement emphasizing imagination, emotion, individual experience, and the sublime. Hulme rejected Romantic ideals of limitless feeling and human perfectibility.
F. S. Flint: An English poet and critic associated with early Imagism and the London literary avant-garde. Flint participated in the poetic discussions that shaped Imagism alongside Hulme.
Poetry (Chicago magazine): An American literary magazine founded in 1912 that became a major venue for modern poetry. Its early publication of Imagist work helped bring the movement into public view.
Romanticism and Classicism: A 1911 essay by T. E. Hulme contrasting Romantic faith in human possibility with classical restraint. This essay gives Hulme’s clearest account of the aesthetic opposition central to his criticism.
New Criticism: A twentieth-century school of literary criticism that emphasizes close analysis of a text’s formal features. Its attention to concentrated verbal form resonates with aspects of Hulme’s poetic program.