2. Definition
Main Characteristics
Main Figures
Charles Baudelaire
Walter Pater
3.
4. Definition:
A literary and cultural disposition which
resisted the main streams of thought in
realism and naturalism and presented
an alternative set of concerns: with
language, with poetic form, with
evocation of mental states and ideal
worlds, and the most intimate recesses
of human subjectivity.
5.
6. Main Characteristics:
1. Symbolism was a reaction against realism
and naturalism, which were based on
description.
2. Symbolism rejected the idea that
language was referential, that words were
somehow the signs of a pre-given reality.
3. Reality is an interpretation from a
particular perspective.
7. Main Characteristics:
4. The symbolists refused to take the
material world they had inherited as the
real world.
5. They saw the present world as an
imperfect reflection or expression of a
higher, infinite, and eternal realm which
could be evoked by symbols.
8.
9. Charles Baudelaire (1821–
1867)
Known as the founder of French
symbolism.
Baudelaire’s famous or infamous
collection of poems, Les Fleurs du mal
(The Flowers of Evil), was published in
1857
10. Walter Pater (1839–1894)
Walter Pater is best known for his
phrase “art for art’s sake.” In his
insistence on artistic autonomy, on
aesthetic experience as opposed to
aesthetic object.
His experience eventually inspired his
The Renaissance: Studies in Art and
Poetry (1873).
