Literary Movement
Symbolism
Emerged in France in the 1880s as a reaction against Realism and Naturalism. The Symbolist Manifesto (Jean Moréas, 1886) proclaimed poetry's power to suggest rather than describe.
Definition
A late 19th-century literary movement using symbols and indirect suggestion to evoke states of mind and inner experience.
Example
Mallarmé, Verlaine, Rimbaud in France; W.B. Yeats in English; Stefan George in German.