Knowra Symbolism Symbolism Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century literary and artistic movement that used suggestion, metaphor, and evocative imagery to express inner states and ideas.
Charles Baudelaire : A French poet whose work joined sensory imagery, urban life, and spiritual longing. His poem “Correspondances” offered a model for Symbolist links between senses and hidden meanings.
Symbol : A sign, image, or object that evokes meanings beyond its literal presence. Symbolist imagery invites interpretation without fixing every image to one meaning.
Arthur Rimbaud : A French poet whose brief career transformed nineteenth-century poetry through radical imagery and form. His “voyant” poetics and sensory experiments became touchstones for Symbolist writers.
Symbolist poetry : Poetry that uses sound, imagery, and suggestion to evoke states of mind or spiritual meanings. It is the movement’s most direct literary expression.
Modernism : A broad cultural movement that challenged inherited forms and conventions from the late nineteenth century onward. Symbolist experiments helped prepare modernist departures from straightforward representation.
Paul Verlaine : A French poet known for musical language, shifting moods, and influential verse. His 1884 essay collection helped identify and promote the emerging Symbolist poets.
Synesthesia : A blending of sensory experiences, such as describing sounds through colors. Cross-sensory language turns perceived correspondences into poetic structure.
Odilon Redon : A French artist whose drawings and paintings depict dreamlike, visionary worlds. His art translated Symbolist inwardness into enigmatic figures and imagined landscapes.
Symbolist painting : Painting that privileges imagined, mythic, or psychological subjects over literal observation. Painters adapted Symbolist priorities to color, figure, and composition.
Surrealism : An artistic and literary movement that explored dreams, the unconscious, and unexpected associations. Surrealists inherited Symbolism’s trust in images that exceed rational explanation.
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