1. Symbolism: A Movement in
Modern English Poetry

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

3. The wave of criticism and revival

4. “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,”

5. Wallace Stevens (1879-1955

6. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

7. Ezra Pound(1885-1972)

8. W.B. Yeats (1865-1939

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

10. objectives

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

12. Expression particularly in two ways
• mingling the
perceptions of one’s
sense (a sight, touch or
smell etc)

13. releasing and giving symbolic expression
to our subconscious impulses

14. Features

15. Incantation

16. incantation

17. Obscurity

18. cannot be tied down to any single and
simple interpretation

19. Repetition

20. deep mysterious suggestiveness

21. Colours were not merely colours

23. Form of language
• free verse
• dense syntax
• figurative language
• rhythm

25. neoclassicism
romanticism
realism
symbolism

26. 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

27. Works consulted
• Dina Ripsman Eylon’s
article “symbolism”
• Dr loius’article
“symbols”
• HISTORY OS ENGLISH
LITERATURE T Singh
• Modern Poetry