Understanding Symbolism in Literature: Yeats, Ibsen, and Shaw

Symbolism in Literature

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations, and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness.

Charles Baudelaire and Open-Ended Symbols

Charles Baudelaire created open-ended symbols. He brought the invisible into being through the visible and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound.

A symbol is a keyhole to a different world, giving way to ambitions.

Poets focused on their inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical, and ambiguous styles.

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) and Irish Literature

W.B. Yeats (1865-1939) - Irish literature

• On Baile's Strand (1903), The Song of Wandering Aengus: He bids his beloved be at peace.

He was born in Ireland. He embraced Artistic Nationalism and rejected Materialism, empiricism, and an excessive interest in wealth. He believed in the possibility of living reality and entering into spirits and magic. For Yeats, literature was the door to enter the spiritual world.

His first poem was The Wandering of Oisin (1888), a symbolistic poem. His second poem was The Celtic Twilight (1892), a book of short texts including very short stories, anecdotes, beliefs and folklore, ghosts, leprechauns, and fairies. The main idea is that people in the west of Ireland live between the modern world and the ancient world, between materialism and belief in spiritual life. Symbolism for Yeats represents the struggle between the material world and the spiritual world.

Ibsenian Drama

• Standard everyday language.
• A social problem affecting many people.

Yeats believed that language must be interesting and literature should deal with universal problems of humankind, like love, old age, and death. "Art has to be eternal and universal."

Henrik Ibsen (Norway 1828-1906): A Doll's House and Peer Gynt (1867), a mythological play in verse.

Key Elements of an Ibsenian Play:

• A social problem is exposed/defined.
• The problem is discussed.
• A solution is put forward.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, Ireland. With his background in economics and politics, Shaw's socialist viewpoint gave his writing a sense of hope for human improvement. He worked as an art critic, then a music critic, and finally as a theatre critic from 1895-1898. He was the main practitioner of Ibsenian drama in English. According to Yeats, a play with a thesis has a social problem exposed, different solutions put forward, and a solution eventually offered.

Elements of satire: Satires don’t offer suggestions; they simply point out what is wrong with society and people. Satires expose errors and conditions society no longer notices because we have grown to accept them or ignore them. Satire is persuasive writing and uses logical, emotional, and ethical appeals.

Works: Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893), Pygmalion, Major Barbara, The Philanderer, Widowers' Houses (1893)