Janet Ignacio
Kc Francisco
Michelle Smith
Jeffrey Alvarado
 Originated from France: 1850’s-1900’s
 Symbolism was an idealistic movement, created by artists
discontented with their culture
 Is a link between Romanticism and Modernism.
 The poetry conveys very personal, irrational, and dream-like state of
consciousness.
 Imagery
 Personification
 Simile
 Allusion
 Synecdoche
 Alliteration
 Metaphor
 Symbolism
 Allusion










Born [American] on September 26, 1888 in St. Louis, Missouri.
Educated at Harvard University & Merton College, Oxford.
Received a B.A in Philosophy
Became a British Citizen in 1927, also becoming a member of the Anglican Church.
Settled in England, where he was for a time a schoolmaster and a bank clerk, and
eventually literary editor for the publishing house Faber & Faber, of which he later
became a director.
Became a poet, dramatist, and a literary critic.
Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
Married a Cambridge governess, Vivienne Haigh-Wood, in June 26, 1915. Separated in
1932, and re-married to former secretary, Esmé Valerie Fletcher (32) in 1957.
He founded and, during the seventeen years of its publication (1922-1939), edited the
exclusive and influential literary journal Criterion
T.S Eliot died of emphysema and was cremated in London
on January 4, 1965.
 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1917)
 The Waste Land (1922)
 Ash-Wednesday (1930)
 The Rock (1934)
 Four Quartets (1944)
LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

Imagery – The description of the setting enhances the story. It features a dark, smelly neighborhood
of London. It’s October. Steam is rising from the streets, and a sick yellow fog circulates around the
crooked houses. Drunks are stumbling out of the "sawdust restaurants" and sloppy-looking couples
argue outside of "cheap hotels.“
“Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:”
“And seeing that it was a soft October night”
“The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes ”

Personification - :Parts of the scene are depicted using personification. It’s not the "retreats" that are
"muttering," but it seems that way because they are the kinds of places where you would run into
muttering people. Also, the nights aren’t actually "restless"; they make people restless.
“Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels”
 W.B. Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist (playwright)
 Born in Dublin, Ireland on June 13th, 1865
 Educated in London and Dublin
 Godolphin School in Hammersmith
 Eramus Smith High School
 Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin
 Founded the Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin, 1899,
along with Lady Augusta Gregory
 Married to Miss George Hyde- Less in 1917 who then too
became interested in poetry.
 Became elected as an Irish Senator in 1922 until his retirement in 1928.
 Received the Noble Prize in Literature in 1923.
 Died in Roquebrane, France on January 28, 1929.
 When You Are Old (1893)
 No Second Troy (1910)
 The Rose of the World (1893)
 The Unappeasable Host (1899)
 Men Improved with the Years (1919)
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
 Symbolism: “Leda and the Swan” (Title)
 The title is a symbol because the Swan is actually the Greek God, Zeus.
 Personification: “How can those terrified vague fingers push..”
 The fingers cannot be ‘terrified’, only Leda can express that emotion.
 Imagery: “A shudder in the loins engenders there..”
 This emphasizes the actual sexual intercourse.
 Allusion: “A broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead.”
 The turning point in the poem; Consequence: from the rape to the fall of Troy.
 Synecdoche: “did she put on his knowledge with his power/ Before the
indifferent beak could let her drop?”
 The ‘indifferent beak” = Zeus as a Swan.
 British poet, critic, & magazine editor
 born in Wales on February 28, 1865
 Privately educated
 Moved to London at 16 and joined a literary
community
 The Rhymer's Club
 was a staff member of Athenaeum, Saturday
Review, and The Savoy
 had a psychotic breakdown in 1909 and was sent
to an asylum
 died from pneumonia in 1945
Silhouettes (1896)
The Book of Rhymer's Club (1892)
The Symbolist Movement in
Literature (1899)
The feverish room and that white bed,
The tumbled skirts upon a chair,
The novel flung half-open where
Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints, are spread;
The mirror that has sucked your face
Into its secret deep of deeps,
And there mysteriously keeps
Forgotten memories of grace;
And you, half dressed and half awake,
Your slant eyes strangely watching me,
And I, who watch you drowsily,
With eyes that, having slept not, ache;
This (need one dread? nay, dare one hope?)
Will rise, a ghost of memory, if
Ever again my handkerchief
Is scented with White Heliotrope
•
•
•
•
•
Imagery: The feverish room and that white bed,/the tumbled skirts upon
a chair...
o used to illustrate the poem's promiscuous setting
o the room is described as "feverish" because it is hot and sweaty
Alliteration: Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread
o adds rhythm to the poem
Personification: The mirror that has sucked your face
o the mirror reflects the woman's character, secrets, and memories
Metaphor: This (need one dread? nay, dare one hope?)/Will rise a
ghost of memory, if...
o The image of the woman is compared to a ghost
o the memory of her will haunt him
Symbolism: White Heliotrope
o White heliotrope is a beautiful flower that has a pleasant scent,
however it is also poisonous and can cause death
o May represent the affair or the woman

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde born 16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900

Irish writer and poet

Went to Trinity College, Dublin
–
Wilde became a quickly established member in the University
Philosophical Society and was first in his class; presenting his philosophies
on aesthetics.

One of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s

Known for his epigrams, his plays and his imprisonment

Also known for his involvement in aestheticism



The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
De Profundis (written in 1897 & published in 1905)

While in prison, originally a letter written to discuss his career up to date and his
fall, blaming himself and taking responsibility.
The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in grey:
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold
The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses' walls
Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul's
Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.
Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons: and a bird
Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.
But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.
 "The Thames nocturne of blue and gold,/ Changed to a harmony in
gray;/ A barge with ocher-colored hay/ Dropped from the
wharf..." Influence from James A. MacNeill whistler from Nocturne in
the Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge and Harmony in Gray.
 "But one pale woman all alone,/ The daylight kissing her wan hair,/
Loitered beneath the gas lamp’s flare,/ With lips of flame and heart of
stone." Uses of imagery
conveying society’s view of prostitution as almost transparent, not
seeing the poor, those who are forced to do what they would not
otherwise do in order to survive
The Symbolist Movement conveyed a dream-like
state away from their culture. Identify a poem and
construct and essay which utilizes figurative
language to portray symbolism as a whole.
2. The Symbolist Movement is made up of being
personal, irrational, and dream-like. Analyze a poem
and construct an essay in which it displays all three.
3. They Symbolist Movement utilizes a lot of figurative
language, as does every poetry movement does, but
explain how the Symbolist Movement separates itself
from other poetry movements.
1.
What is the Symbolist Movement a link between?
2. What 3 words describe the Symbolist Movement?
3. Name 1 Notable Work of T.S Eliot [besides the one we focused on].
4. In what year did Eliot become a British Citizen and turned to the
Anglican Churh.
5. What is a synecdoche?
6. How does Greek Mythology relate to W.B Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”
7.
In the poem Impression Du Matin, how does Oscar Wilde depict the
mood of the city compared to the Thames?
8. What happened when Oscar Wilde was in the middle of writing “De
Profundis”
9. Where was Arthur Symons born?
10. T/F Arthur Symons died from cancer.
1.
 Create your own poem that relates to the Symbolist
Movement!
 Make sure it’s personal, irrational, and dream-like ;)
 AND GO!
 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1948/eliot-
bio.html
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot#Life
 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1923/yeats-
bio.html
 http://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Yeats-William-Butler.html#b
 http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/
KBAAAAAAAI.