Impressionism (literature)

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Literary Impressionism is influenced by the European Impressionist art movement; as such, many writers adopted a style that relied on associations. The Dutch Tachtigers explicitly tried to incorporate Impressionism into their prose, poems, and other literary works. Much of what has been called "impressionist" literature is subsumed into several other categories, especially Symbolism, its chief exponents being Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Laforgue, and the Imagists. It focuses on a particular character's perception of events. The edges of reality are blurred by choosing points of view that lie outside the norm. [1] [2] [3]

Impressionistic literature can be simply defined as when an author centers their story or attention on the character's mental life (such as the character's impressions, feelings, sensations and emotions) rather than trying to interpret them. Authors such as Virginia Woolf ( Mrs Dalloway ) and Joseph Conrad ( Heart of Darkness and "The Lagoon") are among the foremost creators of the form. These novels have been said to be the finest examples of a genre which is not easily comprehensible. [4]

People wore me down. I’m tired of being an inn for those screaming, fussing and littering creatures. Open the windows! Let the fresh air in! Take out the trash together with those who leave it. Let cleanness and peace fill the house.

— Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, "Intermezzo" (1908)

In Ukrainian literature, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky marked himself off with his short prose. In the novel Intermezzo the narrator goes to the countryside to "escape from the iron hand of the city" and spiritually recovers in nature. As in his play, Kotsiubynsky identifies a number of characters: my fatigue, the fields in June, the sun, three white sheepdogs, the cuckoo, the larks, the iron hand of the city, the human grief, and the narrator's soul, which appears to be a some kind of a stage filled with pains and joys, fatigue and hope.

The term is used to describe a work of literature characterized by the selection of a few details to convey the sense impressions left by an incident or scene. This style of writing occurs when characters, scenes, or actions are portrayed from a subjective point of view of reality. [3]

Related Research Articles

Impressionism in music was a movement among various composers in Western classical music whose music focuses on mood and atmosphere, "conveying the moods and emotions aroused by the subject rather than a detailed tone‐picture". "Impressionism" is a philosophical and aesthetic term borrowed from late 19th-century French painting after Monet's Impression, Sunrise. Composers were labeled Impressionists by analogy to the Impressionist painters who use starkly contrasting colors, effect of light on an object, blurry foreground and background, flattening perspective, etc. to make the observer focus their attention on the overall impression.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Impressionism</span> 19th-century art movement

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.

In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is a narrative mode or method that attempts "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind" of a narrator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abstract impressionism</span> Art movement

Abstract Impressionism is an art movement that originated in New York City, in the 1940s. It involves the painting of a subject such as real-life scenes, objects, or people (portraits) in an Impressionist-style, but with an emphasis on varying measures of abstraction. The paintings are often painted en plein air, an artistic style involving painting outside with the landscape directly in front of the artist. The movement works delicately between the lines of pure abstraction and the allowance of an impression of reality in the painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Narrative</span> Account that presents connected events

A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional or fictional. Narratives can be presented through a sequence of written or spoken words, through still or moving images, or through any combination of these. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, which is derived from the adjective gnarus. The formal and literary process of constructing a narrative—narration—is one of the four traditional rhetorical modes of discourse, along with argumentation, description, and exposition. This is a somewhat distinct usage from narration in the narrower sense of a commentary used to convey a story. Many additional narrative techniques, particularly literary ones, are used to build and enhance any given story.

Metafiction is a form of fiction that emphasizes its own narrative structure in a way that inherently reminds the audience that they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts. Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heidelberg School</span> 19th-century Australian art movement

The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. It has been described as Australian impressionism.

<i>The Sun Also Rises</i> 1926 novel by Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises is the first novel by the American writer Ernest Hemingway. It portrays American and British expatriates who travel along the Camino de Santiago from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona and watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early modernist novel, it received mixed reviews upon publication. Hemingway biographer Jeffrey Meyers writes that it is now "recognized as Hemingway's greatest work" and Hemingway scholar Linda Wagner-Martin calls it his most important novel. The novel was published in the United States in October 1926 by Scribner's. A year later, Jonathan Cape published the novel in London under the title Fiesta. It remains in print.

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories, presenting the story in its entirety. It is optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.

A plot twist is a literary technique that introduces a radical change in the direction or expected outcome of the plot in a work of fiction. When it happens near the end of a story, it is known as a twist ending or surprise ending. It may change the audience's perception of the preceding events, or introduce a new conflict that places it in a different context. A plot twist may be foreshadowed, to prepare the audience to accept it, but it usually comes with some element of surprise. There are various methods used to execute a plot twist, such as withholding information from the audience, or misleading them with ambiguous or false information. Not every plot has a twist, but some have multiple lesser ones, and some are defined by a single major twist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo-Impressionism</span> Art movement

Neo-Impressionism is a term coined by French art critic Félix Fénéon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat. Seurat's most renowned masterpiece, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, marked the beginning of this movement when it first made its appearance at an exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. Around this time, the peak of France's modern era emerged and many painters were in search of new methods. Followers of Neo-Impressionism, in particular, were drawn to modern urban scenes as well as landscapes and seashores. Science-based interpretation of lines and colors influenced Neo-Impressionists' characterization of their own contemporary art. The Pointillist and Divisionist techniques are often mentioned in this context, because they were the dominant techniques in the beginning of the Neo-Impressionist movement.

Fiction writing is the composition of non-factual prose texts. Fictional writing often is produced as a story meant to entertain or convey an author's point of view. The result of this may be a short story, novel, novella, screenplay, or drama, which are all types of fictional writing styles. Different types of authors practice fictional writing, including novelists, playwrights, short story writers, radio dramatists and screenwriters.

The sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is an 18th- and 19th-century literary genre which celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility. Sentimentalism, which is to be distinguished from sensibility, was a fashion in both poetry and prose fiction beginning in the eighteenth century in reaction to the rationalism of the Augustan Age.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of literary terms</span>

This glossary of literary terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the discussion, classification, analysis, and criticism of all types of literature, such as poetry, novels, and picture books, as well as of grammar, syntax, and language techniques. For a more complete glossary of terms relating to poetry in particular, see Glossary of poetry terms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tone (literature)</span> A creative figures attitude toward both a subject and also an audience

In literature, the tone of a literary work expresses the writer's attitude toward or feelings about the subject matter and audience.

Literary realism is a literary genre, part of the broader realism in arts, that attempts to represent subject-matter truthfully, avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements. It originated with the realist art movement that began with mid-nineteenth-century French literature (Stendhal) and Russian literature. Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are. Realist authors chose to depict every day and banal activities and experiences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky</span> Ukrainian author (1864–1913)

Mykhailo Mykhailovych Kotsiubynsky was a Ukrainian author whose writings described typical Ukrainian life at the start of the 20th century. Kotsiubynsky's early stories were described as examples of ethnographic realism; in the years to come, with his style of writing becoming more and more sophisticated, he evolved into one of the most talented Ukrainian impressionist and modernist writers. The popularity of his novels later led to some of them being made into Soviet movies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Literature</span> Written work of art

Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose, fiction, drama, poetry, and including both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novel</span> Substantial work of narrative fiction

A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story ", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel. Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, and John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance". M. H. Abrams and Walter Scott have argued that a novel is a fiction narrative that displays a realistic depiction of the state of a society, while the romance encompasses any fictitious narrative that emphasizes marvellous or uncommon incidents. Works of fiction that include marvellous or uncommon incidents are also novels, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Such "romances" should not be confused with the genre fiction romance novel, which focuses on romantic love.

<i>Ved Vejen</i> Book by Herman Bang

Ved Vejen is a short novel written by the Danish author Herman Bang in 1886. It was originally published in Copenhagen by Det Schubotheske Forlag as part of a collection of four stories entitled Stille Eksistenser, centering on women who are subdued or living in isolation. It was first published independently in 1898. An impressionist novel, it relates the story of Katinka, a sensitive but ambitious young woman married to a boisterous and somewhat vulgar station master, Bai.

References

  1. Baldick, Chris (2015). "Impressionism". The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Online Version) (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780191783234.
  2. Greene, Roland; et al., eds. (2012). "Impressionism". The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (4th rev. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN   978-0-691-15491-6.
  3. 1 2 "Impressionism in Literature | Definition, Characteristics, Literary Example, Art". May 26, 2016.
  4. Fried, Michael (2018). What was Literary Impressionism?. Harvard University Press. ISBN   9780674980792.