Introductory Notes on French Symbolism

     Opposed to bourgeois sentimentality in the arts
     Irony the principal stance
     Struggle against (and reflection of) contemporary urban
     alienation; invention of a new urban way of rich living. The
     key will be Aesthetics: a substitute transcendance.
     Hence: the Gesamtkunstwerk, a search for correspondence
     (non-discursive meaning) in all areas of human experience. 

SYMBOLISM = putting things together
          = connecting levels of being
          = generation of meaning (a slippage of agency)

L'ART POUR L'ART = generation of an alternative, aesthetic
universe (a major modernist tendency)

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Seaman's dichotomy: 

Ancient/Modern
Classical/Romantic

Classical = Order
(horizontal, down-to-earth, 

Romanticism is vertical 
(Calling on gods and devils)

The Baroque and the Modern are both analogs of Romanticism:
revolts against classical order, proportion, abstract generality.

Classical view elevates the oral tradition in poetry, viewing it
as ideal, experiential.

Romantic/Modern view elevates the written tradition, suggesitng
that poetry is concrete, fixed on a page.

In Modernism, visual, written language protests against normal
language use.

Classicism separates the arts; Romanticism Modernism mixes them
up (synaesthesia), seeks the Gesamtkunstwerk, attempts to combine
everything in one vision, rejective narrative linearity. 

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Major Figures: Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Corbiere, Mallarme,
Apollinaire