Symbolism

Symbolism An important (but hard to define precisely) movement in French literature, beginning around 1880, as the poetry of Mallarme and Verlaine was beginning to be more widely known. On 18 September 1886, Jean Moréas published his »Manifesto of Symbolism« in Le Figaro. The 30-year-old poet was diametrically opposed to the »naturalism« of novelist Emile Zola (1840 – 1902). He favored a more flexible poetic line, and a renunciation of realism. Symbolism's goal was to evoke, not to describe…