Imagism, Imagists and Imagery: Ezra Pound, H.D. and William Carlos Williams

• Thesis title in Czech: Imagismus, imagisté a snímky: Ezra Pound, H.D. a William Carlos Williams
• Thesis title in English: Imagism, Imagists and Imagery: Ezra Pound, H.D. and William Carlos Williams
• Key words: Modernism|Modernist Poetry|Imagist poetry
• English key words: Modernism|modernist poetry|Imagist poetry
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2021/2022
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Stephan Delbos, M.F.A., Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 22.01.2022
• Date of assignment: 24.01.2022
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 07.02.2022
• Date and time of defence: 04.09.2023 09:30
• Date of electronic submission: 07.08.2023
• Date of proceeded defence: 04.09.2023
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: doc. PhDr. Mariana Machová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Imagism, almost parallel with the first World War, was an American poetry movement applying free verse, using an “Image” which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant[1], and accenting the meaning of each word, moving the opposite direction from Romanticism and towards to Modernism, as its sub-genre.[2]The goal of this thesis is to compare and analyze some of the most notable works of the most eminent poets and founders of the Imagism movement: Ezra Pound, H.D. and William Carlos Williams, and to evaluate the main characteristics of the movement itself.
This thesis will define the three most prominent stylistic tendencies of Imagism, and illustrate said features in the work of each of the poets, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle. The analysis of each poet’s work will serve as material for a demonstration of the most prominent characteristics of this literary movement.
The first feature of Imagist poetry, direct treatment of the “thing,”[3]will be represented by William Carlos Williams, alongside sharp imagery, highlighted in his collection Spring and All, including the poems “By the Road to the Contagious Hospital” “The Red Wheelbarrow” “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” and “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” The second characteristic, to use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation[4], will be examined in Ezra Pound’s “The Return” “In a Station of the Metro” and selected poems from The Cantos. The last essential aspect of Imagism regarding rhythm, to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome[5], will be illustrated in the work of H.D., including her poems “Hermes of the Ways” “Orchard” “Epigram” and “Helen.” This thesis will include analyses and close readings of the work of each poet as well as engagement with theoretical texts regarding Imagism and American Modernism.

[1]Pound, “A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste,” 200.
[2]Sandback, “The Object-Poem: In Defense of Referentiality,” 461.
[3]Pound, “Imagisme,” 199.
[4]Ibid., 199.
[5]Ibid., 199.

References

Primary sources:
Doolittle, Hilda. The Collected Poems 1912-1944. New York: New Directions, 1986.
Pound, Ezra. “A few don’ts by an Imagiste” Poetry 1, no. 6 (1913): 198-206.
Pound, Ezra. The Cantos of Ezra Pound. New York: New Directions, 1996.
Williams, Williams Carlos. "XXII", Spring and All. New York: Contact Editions, 1923.
Williams, Williams Carlos. The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1967.
Williams, Williams Carlos. The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 1: 1909-1939. New York: New Directions, 1991.
Secondary sources:
Bogan, Louise. “Modernism in American Literature.” American Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1950): 99–111.
Emmitt, Helen V. “Forgotten Memories and Unheard Rhythms: H.D.’s Poetics as a Responce to Male Modernism.” Paideuma 33, no. 2/3 (2004): 131–53.
Eliot, T. S. “Ezra Pound.” Poetry 68, no. 6 (1946): 326–38.
Lewis, Ethan. “Imagist Technique in ‘The Cantos.’” Paideuma 28, no. 1 (1999): 113–31.
Lumsden, Robert. “Ezra Pound’s Imagism.” Paideuma 15, no. 2/3 (1986): 253–64.
Mohr, Bill. “The Wheelbarrow in Question: Ideology and the Radical Pellucidity of William Carlos Williams’s Images.” William Carlos Williams Review 24, no. 2 (2004): 27–39.
Sandbank, Shimon. “The Object-Poem: In Defence of Referentiality.” Poetics Today 6, no. 3 (1985): 461–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/1771906.
William Q. Malcuit. “The Poet’s Place: William Carlos Williams and the Production of an American Avant-Garde.” William Carlos Williams Review 28, no. 1–2 (2008): 55–77.