ROMANTICISM AND CLASSICISM--T.E.HULME

ROMANTICISM AND CLASSICISM

T.E.HULME

[Lecture notes by Dr. S. Sreekumar

 Prepared for Annamalai University MPhil Scholars]

This is a revised version. The Blog has another essay with the same title

Disclaimer

Scholars, please note:

These study materials are only for classroom purposes. The explanations are not original in any sense but taken from various sources. These notes are offered with the sole intention of helping students and research scholars with a quick overview of Hulme’s ideas. Those who would like to have a deeper or original study of the subject must look elsewhere for assistance.

Brief Biographical Note

T.E HULME (1833 – 1917) was a philosopher and aesthetician. He was killed in the First World War. From his unpublished papers, Herbert Reed edited a volume of critical essays entitled Speculations from which ‘Romanticism and Classicism’ is taken. This essay can be read as the manifesto of Imagism, especially in its recommendation of a dry hard style of poetry. Hulme is the thinker behind the Pound-Eliot revolution in English poetry. His influence is visible in the poetry of Eliot. The essay advocates a preference for Classicism over Romanticism and establishes a modernist poetics based on that.

It must be remembered that ‘Romanticism’ and ‘Classicism’ are pliable terms.

Romanticism and Classicism—T. E. Hulme

Romanticism and Classicism—T. E. Hulme

Explanatory notes—S. Sreekumar

T. E. Hulme [Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883-1917)] was a poet and critic who had a notable influence on modernism. He was an aesthetic philosopher and is called the 'father of imagism'. Hulme was greatly influenced by Henri Bergson¹, the French Philosopher. 

The imagists and other avant-garde poets of the period strongly reacted against the vacuity ( blankness) of late- Victorian poetry². Hulme was in the forefront of the reaction against the Victorians. As the secretary of the Poets' Club he got the chance to meet poets like Ezra Pound. Hulme published only 25 poems totaling some 260 lines, but his poems like ‘Autumn’ and ‘City Sunset’ have the distinction of being the first Imagist poems.