ENG140Y5 Lecture Notes - Imagism, Free Verse, Aesthetic Realism
Document Summary
A late nineteenth century movement in poetry ad visual art and to a lesser extent, fiction, drama and music. The symbolist movement began around 1860 primarily by. By the early twentieth century, symbolism had spread to other european literatures and became another technique favoured by modernists who sought new modes of expression. Symbolism is a precursor to other modernist forms, including expression: the symbolist aesthetic. Realism leads to a superficial understanding of humanity; symbolism rebels against realism by focusing on larger truths (not surface appearances) Great truths about humankind can only be communicated through indirection and suggestion. Symbolism rejects the literal and explores dreams, imagination, human spirituality in its quest to communicate truth. Symbolists should reject plain meanings, declamations, sentimentality and matter of fact description. Traditional forms should be relaxed to allow the symbolist to create evocative, far-reaching symbols that are paradoxically extraordinary communicative and ambiguous (c) symbolist poetry.
