عنوان

'Visible worlds' :

TLets343863

'Visible worlds' :

[Thesis]

Connor, Rachel Anne.

the process of the image in the work of H.D.

University of Liverpool

2000

Ph.D.

University of Liverpool

2000

This thesis examines the literary deployment of the visual in the work ofH. D. (Hilda Doolittle). Beginning with a discussion of the early poetry of ScaGarden (1916) and the essay Notes on Thought and Vision (1919), 1 argue thatH. D. 's categorisation as an Imagist poet has effaced the political and aestheticpossibilities opened up by her prose and later work. H. D. *s representation of'womb vision' in Notes on Thought and Vision can be seen to anticipate thenotion of' the 'creating spectator' in the theoretical writings of the Soviet filmdirector. Sergei Eisenstein. Thus, by considering Sea Garden alongsidedevelopments in early cinema, I re-evaluate the image in H. D. *s early work, andlocate her poetics not as 'static" but as kinetic.H. D. was also directly involved in film-making and in the writing of filmcriticism. Chapter Two explores how her engagement with the moving image isinscribed into the autobiographical novel Her, written in 1917. Examining Heralongside the silent film Borderline (1930), which H. D. helped to produce, thischapter explores issues of sexual and racial difference which are foregroundedthrough the formal devices employed in both texts. Chapter Three examines TileGýfi, which was written during the Second World War, in the light of H. D. 'scontributions to the film journal Close Up (1927-33). This reading not onlyilluminatcs the political and ideological implications of H. D. 's use of the visual,it explores the intersections between literary and visual cultures at the beginningof the twentieth century. Accounts of cinema are largely absent from the historyof literary Modernism and the thesis therefore goes some way towards arevisionist analysis of the period.Chapter Four extends the paradigm of the visual in H. D. 's work stillfurther, analysing her memoirs Tribute To Freud (1956) and the unpublishedMqiic Ring (1943-44) in the light of her involvement with spiritualism. Boththese texts encode a critique of the scientific 'gaze' exemplified bypsychoanalysis and offer possibilities for an alternative model of 'seeing' whichis predicated upon spiritual, or visionary, experience. Returning to the discourseof the cinema in Chapter Five, I contextualise my reading of Helen in EDIpt(1961 ) within debates about synchronised sound in early cinema. I also exploreH. D. 's construction of female subjectivity and corporeality in Helen in the lightof recent feminist film theory.In many ways H. D. 's work anticipates the preoccupations of recentfeminist thinkers such as Luce Irigaray, H616ne Cixous and Judith Butler. Thesewriters - along with recent feminist film theorists like Mary Ann Doane and LauranMulvey - provide a theoretical underpinning for the thesis. Such an approachpermits a questioning of H. D. 's perceived position as a 'Modernist' poet.Furthermore, in the light of postmodern preoccupations with process, fluidity andflux, it is possible to see how dominant configurations of gender and sexualityare. through H. D. 's work, deliberately, and consistently, unsettled.

Hilda Doolittle; Poetry; Film-making; Feminist

Connor, Rachel Anne.

University of Liverpool

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y