Symbolism: A Movement in Modern English Poetry

Symbolism as a literary movement was first expressly announced and named by Jean Moreas in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886.

The wave of criticism and revival

“The Symbolism of Poetry” (1900) by William Butler Yeats the symbolist poem as a short lyric, perpetuating an emotion that is then transformed into “some great epic,”

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Ezra Pound(1885-1972)

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939

Symbolism was a reaction against the rigidity imposed on French poetry by that neo-classic school, the Parnassian

objectives

the symbolists were not primarily interested in the ideas of the mind, but in the expression of the whole personality

Expression particularly in two ways

• mingling the perceptions of one’s sense (a sight, touch or smell etc)

releasing and giving symbolic expression to our subconscious impulses

Features

Incantation

incantation

Obscurity

cannot be tied down to any single and simple interpretation

Repetition

deep mysterious suggestiveness

Colours were not merely colours

Form of language

• free verse• dense syntax• figurative language• rhythm

neoclassicism

romanticism

realism

symbolism

we get a composite and very attractive type of poetry in which one moves without logical links from the realms of objectively shared common experience into the private domain of the poet’s mind

Works consulted

•  Dina Ripsman Eylon’s article “symbolism”

• Dr loius’article “symbols”

• HISTORY OS ENGLISH LITERATURE T Singh

• Modern Poetry