T. E. Hulme is a controversial figure in modern literary criticism but his influence on the thought of T. S. Eliot and on the principles behind the Imagist movement is assured. Recent critical examinations of him have discovered strong Romantic tendencies in his thought, in spite of his firm anti-Romantic initial stand. This Romanticism is particularly evident in his aesthetics, in the definition of unity he applies to the image. The aim of this paper is to trace the idea of unity through the whole of Hulme's writings, to clarify his definitions of the idea in different contexts, and to try and discover some basis for the particular definition of unity he uses in the case of the image. Hulme's metaphysics delineates the limits of unity and provides his basic definitions of the term. Hulme denies the principle of continuity which he believes to be the basis of Humanism and Romanticism. In place of one all-pervasive unity, he presents a triple structure, in which each realm is different. The realm of ethical and religious values is unified and unchanging. The realm of the knowledge of mathematics and the physical sciences is unified, yet subject to change. The unity of this realm is the product of the human intellect, of its tendency to organize and manipulate the flux of life, reducing it to counter words. The ideas of this realm, which Hulme believes to be finite unities, will change when new facts are introduced. The realm of life is characterized as a continuous state of flux or change and is not unified. Hulme ascribes to Bergson's theory that man has two ways of obtaining knowledge, by intuition and by intellect. Intuition achieves a direct contact with the flux, obtaining an intensive manifold, in which the parts cannot be separated. The intellect divides things into parts, obtaining an extensive manifold. An awkwardness in Hulme's metaphysics is his belief in Original Sin, which makes man a finite unity. This definition of man is a contradiction of his belief that life is flux and change. Whereas Hulme's metaphysics denies a single unified system of reality, his aesthetics postulates the unity of the aesthetic creation. Hulme begins with a mechanistic conception of art which he subsequently contradicts completely. Art occupies a unique place in Hulme's thought, in that he allows it a vital unity which is inconsistent with any of the definitions of unity brought out in the discussion of his metaphysics. Yet the life-in-death which Hulme allows art is only temporary and will decay into commonplace. In the Cinders theory Hulme asserts that plurality is the nature of reality and that relativity is absolute. Unity is impossible, an illusion, on this theory. Yet a work of art emerges in this discussion as a unity, in which the form contains the content completely. Hulme states that art creates another "mystic" world. Art would appear to be the one unity, bringing together all three realms, which according to Hulme's metaphysics must be discontinuous. At the same time, the existence of an artistic unity, unlike the absolute values of religion and ethics, is ephemeral. The idea of unity, in the writings of T. E. Hulme, has different meanings in different contexts. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This project challenges a series of common interpretations of Hulme's work: that his arguments are contradictory; that his career can be separated into distinct “phases”; that he endorsed other thinkers' ideas uncritically; and that he promulgated authoritarian politics. Chapter 1 examines the entries in Hulme's notebooks that relate his views on the nature of reality and language. Read through ideas in the works of Bergson, Nietzsche and Ribot, these rudimentary notes present a coherent “anti-intellectualist” philosophical position, consistent with claims made in his later writings. Chapter 2 focuses on “A Lecture on Modern Poetry.” Hulme's rejection of nineteenth-century verse was part of a broader campaign by poets in London to find new ways of expression, yet his ideas stand independently of claims made by Flint, Storer and Pound. Hulme's greatest contribution to Imagism is the emphasis he put on the use of images in poetry, a method that follows from the distinction he drew in the notebooks between “direct” and “indirect” language. Chapter 3, which examines Hulme's essays and lectures on Bergson, demonstrates that, although he embraced Bergson's philosophical method, Hulme remained critical of many of Bergson's theories. This discredits the claim that he was simply reiterating Bergson's ideas. Ultimately, Bergson's “intuition” enabled Hulme to develop his earlier description of “modern” poetry and to recast it as “classic” poetry. Chapter 4 investigates Hulme's political essays. Together with Storer, Hulme participated in a debate in the Commentator concerning the parliamentary crisis of 1910. It was as part of an attempt to create an efficient propaganda strategy for the Conservative party that Hulme postulated his famous antithesis between Romanticism and Classicism. Hulme's analysis of the process of political conversion shows that in 1910-12 he had not abandoned elements in his thought from Bergson's philosophy. Moreover, far from sharing the authoritarian political views of the Action Française, he can be more accurately described as a “moderate Conservative.” Chapter 5 demonstrates that claims Hulme made in his art criticism are consonant with the general reaction in 1913-14 against representational art. While drawing heavily on Worringer's anti-materialist conception of art history, he was using it to defend his contemporaries' experimentation with geometric forms, in a way similar to Fry and Bell. Although, like Worringer and Ludovici, Hulme campaigned for antihumanism and mixed aesthetics with politics, the model of art he proposed did not carry the authoritarian implications of those of Worringer and Ludovici. Finally, Chapter 6 explores Hulme's war writings. Hulme was not a militarist; rather, he supported Britain's involvement in the war on the grounds that war against Germany would protect the British political institutions. He stayed true to his Conservative principles, using ideas from Sorel and Proudhon to dissociate the “democratic” from the “pacifist” ideology. There is also evidence that, despite his explicit rejection of vitalism in “A Notebook,” Hulme continued to value Bergson's method of “intuition” right up to his death in 1917. This project, therefore, argues for a re-interpretation of Hulme's work and shows the value of scrutinising the intellectual and political context in which he was writing in understanding the precise nature of his thought.

Thesis on violence, love, and sexuality in Keri Hulme's novel The Bone People.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia Southern University, 2008. / "A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts." Under the direction of Joe Pellergino. ETD. Electronic version approved: May 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-86) and appendices.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia Southern University, 2008. / "A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts." Under the direction of Joe Pellergino. ETD. Electronic version approved: May 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-86) and appendices.

Stead argues that Hulme, with only one Maori great-grandparent, is not Maori enough to win a literary prize for Maori writing. The paper examines various means for dealing with the vexed question of how to judge whether someone of mixed ancestry can identify with the part of that ancestry that is a minority without risking appropriation of that culture. Hulme and the controversies surrounding her identity and her novel provide a useful focus.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 403 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 388-403). Abstract available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2009 Jun. 18.

In this study I analyse the role of the heroine in the work of four New Zealand writers, Katherine Mansfield, Robin Hyde, Janet Frame and Keri Hulme, starting from the assumption that such a role is influenced by the notion of the fall and by the perception of the vertigo entailed in it. In order to prove this I turn to the texts of four New Zealand writers dedicating one chapter to each. In the first chapter a few of Katherine Mansfield's short stories are analysed from the vantage point of the fall, investigated both in the construction of the character's subjectivity and in the construction of the narration. In the second chapter a link is established between Katherine Mansfield and Robin Hyde. A particular emphasis is put on the notion of subjectivity in relationship developed by the two writers, highlighting the link between this kind of subjectivity and the notion of the fall. In the third chapter the focus is subsequently shifted to Robin Hyde's work, in particular one of her novels, Wednesday's Children, which is read in the context of Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalistic. In the fourth chapter the notion of the fall is analysed in the fiction of Janet Frame, which is related to the treatment of the notion of the fall present in Keri Hulme's The Bone People. The fifth chapter is dedicated to the analysis of The Bone People as in the novel the notion of the fall and the vertigo perception find their fullest expression, whilst in the sixth chapter a significant parallel is drawn between Janet Frame's Scented Gardens for the Blind and Keri Hulme's The Bone People and links are established with their predecessors. Finally in the seventh chapter the critical perspective is broadened to comprise those common elements in the writing of Katherine Mansfield, Robin Hyde, Janet Frame and Keri Hulme that have been neglected by focusing uniquely on the notion of the fall, and thus to contribute to a more complete overall picture of the comparison presented in this study.

“The More You Look, the more THERE IS to see…” From Hinekaro Goes on a Picnic and Blows up Another Obelisk (Christine Parker, Oceania Parker, 1995) In the 1990s New Zealand was in the grip of free market fundamentalism, neo-liberal deregulation of the economy having begun in the mid-eighties. The Maori protest movement was a major source of societal conflict and feminism had become the ‘F’ word. This study examines my writing and directing during the 1990s in New Zealand. It is proposed that the films contributed to national and international conversations around feminism, colonial struggles, spirituality and the supernatural. It is argued that these works offer a social critique of neoliberalism and the divisive effects of it, on women in particular. In the context of this appraisal neoliberalism is understood to be a set of beliefs that support the functioning of the global free market, with minimal government regulation, except to protect the functioning of private enterprise and the ownership of private property. The short films One Man’s Meat (1991), Peach (1993), and Hinekaro Goes on a Picnic and Blows up Another Obelisk (1995) and the feature film Channelling Baby (1999) are located in an oeuvre of female, Gay, and Maori film makers and artists responding to this environment. The recurrence of alternative utopias, the use of magic realism and the representation of the spiritual and supernatural in my work are also considered in relation to other films made in the period. A case is made that the films were part of a small vanguard of films responding to the 1990s status quo by offering alternative modes of discourse to the dominant economic rationalism. Rich in visual intensity and heightened narrative tropes, such as irony and fragmented narratives, my aesthetic choices, together with recurring themes of chance and fate, agency and identity, are considered to link the films together as a coherent study. While the works are located in an evolving feminist tradition in the 1990s, their continued relevance today, particularly in relation to foregrounding marginal voices and the disruption of dominant paradigms and expectations of female behaviour and identity, underpin the claim for originality.

Nation-building novels are novels which attempt to weave the experiences, values and richness of a variety of cultures, language groups and social contexts into a national heritage that creates a sense ofnational identity and identification for all people within a particular nation-state. This dissertation explores how Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Keri Hulme's The Bone People and Margaret Laurence's The Diviners all use the particularly illuminating metaphor of family to explore nation-building in India, New Zealand and Canada respectively. In questioning traditional definitions of family through the image of the adopted child (or changeling in the case of Midnight's Children), the novels also explore new ways of understanding "belonging" and the "other". Since the meaning of these terms is rooted in the past, these novels also question the "truth" of the past by exposing the fallibility of memory. In chapter one a working definition of "nation" and "nation-building" is given and the vision, purpose and characteristic features of nation-building novels are discussed. Chapter two focuses on Rushdie's novel in which the metaphor of pickling is used to explore history not as a collection of hard facts but as a conglomeration of subjective, sensuous, manufactured and carefully created and preserved flavours. In chapter three Hulme's novel is discussed, particularly in relation to what is "other" and the importance of names. The narrator's idea of "commensalism" is explored as an ideal of syncrecity which does not deny individual identity. Chapter four looks at the development from consolation to contradiction to construction in the development of a hybrid national identity in Laurence's novel. Chapter five looks at the narrative techniques used in order to convey the prophetic nature of the novels' message and discusses the importance of the intertexts of each novel. Chapter six focuses on belonging as it looks at the return of each narrator to her/his symbolic or literal home. The chapter also discusses how the novels attack linearity by separating "time" and "space" (instances of social interaction) from "place" (specific geographical locations) in order to "disembed" their message to emphasise its universal applicability. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1998.