T. E. Hulme and the Ideological Politics of Early Modernism (Historicizing Modernism)

New
Paperback
2017
$48.33

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.

Synopsis

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.

$48.33

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 23 Mar 2017
ISBN 10: 1350028436
ISBN 13: 9781350028432
Book Overview: Draws on archival material to explore the thought of influential Modernist T.E. Hulme and his engagement with the radical politics of the New Age journal.

Media Reviews

Meticulously researched ... This is the fullest account yet of Hulme's intellectual engagement with his multiple contexts. * Times Literary Supplement *
Admirers of Hulme will rejoice at Mead's scrupulous reconstruction of this influential modernist's thinking ... T. E. Hulme and the Ideological Politics of Early Modernism is modernist cultural history at its finest, and Mead has given us a book to which Hulme scholars will no doubt refer for many years to come. * Make It New (the periodical of the Ezra Pound Society) *
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 *
This is a thorough and well-argued account which represents an undoubtedly useful further step on the ongoing reappraisal of Hulme's contribution to the modernist project. * The Year's Work in English Studies *
Mead's patient scrutiny ... offers a great deal of welcome clarification. * Marx & Philosophy Review of Books *
The attention paid to Hulme's complex identity is important, and as a result of reading this book, scholars will be able to more fully integrate the detailed analysis of Hulme into their narratives about modernism. * English Literature in Transition *
[A] detailed study ... [The] extrication of multiple strands of thought is one of the most worthwhile enterprises of this study, relevant to Anglo-French modernist studies in general, regardless of any specific interest in Hulme. * Art History *

Author Bio

Henry Mead is a Research Associate at Teesside University, UK, and Bergen University, Norway. He is the co-editor (with Matthew Feldman and Erik Tonning) of Broadcasting in the Modernist Era (Bloomsbury, 2013).