|
| |
|
| |
|
|
Symbolism
in literature |
 |
Symbolism in literature was a mid 19th to early 20th century
European literary phenomenon that employed symbols and
evocative suggestion in place of direct statement. Symbolist
poets tried to capture sensations and states of mind that
lay beyond normal consciousness by disordering their senses,
indulging in decadence,
occultism,
and opposition to sober
bourgeois values. They rejected the pastoral tradition,
and took their themes and images from city life, emphasizing
its bleak, hallucinatory and/or illicit aspects. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Why's it important? |
 |
Poetscontributing to
Symbolist literature include many of the important
names of the period: Baudelaire,
Huysmans,
Mallarmé,
Rimbaud,
Valéry,
Dario,
Rilke,
Blok,
Verhaeren,
Maeterlinck
and the 90s
poets. From Symbolism developed the many 'isms of the
20th century: Modernism, Postmodernism,
Futurism,
Surrealism,
Dada
and the New
Romantics. Many things had to be rejected to cultivate
this inward consciousness: objectivity, normal grammar and
syntax, logical successions of ideas and images – approaches
that painters
and filmakers in turn found useful.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Symbolism today |
 |
Academics tidy the bewildering variety of literary composition
into themes and movements, and no doubt college students
study Symbolist literature as a precursor of Modernism.
But Symbolism shaped the contemporary consciousness, and
is far from dead. There exist contemporary
schools of Symbolists, both in literature and painting.
The wider concerns of the Symbolists – alienation from
big business and materialism, the Cartesian split between
mind and body, the biological association of thought and feeling
– are not only pursued by contemporary writers and poets
but by scientists
and philosophers.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Symbolist literature: guides |
|
Good introductions
to Symbolist literature are: The Symbolist Movement (1970)
by W.K. Cornell, The Heritage of Symbolism (1943) by
C.M. Bowra and The Symbolist Movement in the Literature
of European Languages edited by A. Balakian (1982). Useful
bibliographies follow the Symbolism entry in The
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (1993).
For anthologies you'll probably have to consult the collected
works of individual
poets, or search the older shelves of libraries and antiquarian
booksellers. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
