SOURCE: Wellek, René. “The Term and Concept of Symbolism in Literary History.” In Discriminations: Further Concepts of Criticism, pp. 92-121. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970.

In the following essay, Wellek seeks to define Symbolism as a movement and describes its influence on European literature.

The term and concept of symbolism (and symbol) is so vast a topic that it cannot even be sketched within the limits of this paper. The word goes back to ancient Greece and, there, had a complex history which has not, I suspect, been traced adequately in the only history of the term, Max Schlesinger's Geschichte des Symbols, published in 1912.¹

What I want to discuss is something much more specific: not even symbol and symbolism in literature but the term and concept of symbolism as a period in literary history. It can, I suggest, be conveniently used as a general term for the...