Image, symbol, Imagism, Symbolism


　

 

image     

    1image   images 

If you have an image of something or someone, you have a picture or idea of them in your mind.

    The image of art theft as a gentleman's crime is outdated.

    2image   images  

An image is a picture of someone or something. (FORMAL)

    ...photographic images of young children...

        4image   images 

An image is a poetic description of something. (FORMAL)

    The natural images in the poem are meant to be suggestive of realities beyond themselves.

 

    5image 

If you are the image of someone else, you look very much like them.

    Marianne's son was the image of his father.

 

(c) HarperCollins Publishers.

 

symbol     

    1symbol   symbols 

Something that is a symbol of a society or an aspect of life seems to represent it because it is very typical of it.

    To them, the monarchy is the special symbol of nationhood.

     2symbol   symbols 

A symbol of something such as an idea is a shape or design that is used to represent it.

    Later in this same passage Yeats resumes his argument for the Rose as an Irish symbol.

     3symbol   symbols 

A symbol for an item in a calculation or scientific formula is a number, letter, or shape that represents that item.

    What's the chemical symbol for mercury?

(c) HarperCollins Publishers.


　

 

 

Literary Terms: Image vs. Symbol

Imagery: collectively, the images of a literary work.

 

Image (意像):
A concrete picture, either literarily descriptive, as in “Red roses covered the white wall,” or figurative, as “She is a rose,” each carrying a sensual and emotive connotation.

A figurative image may be an ANALOGY, METAPHOR, SIMILE, PERSONIFICATION,, or the like.

Symbol (象徵):

A symbol is a SIGNIFIER (意符): it has a potential relation to something being SIGNIFIED(意旨). In that relation there are three aspects of particular importance.

First, it conveys to the mind the sense of something specific which is signified;

Second, its relation to the signified is an arbitrary and conventionally assumed relation;

Third, it is intelligible only because it is different from every other signifier.

 

--Northrop Frye, Sheridan Barker, and George Perkins. The Harper Handbook to Literature.

 

 

Three kinds of sign

  1. Icon: “+” = Christianity, “swastika”= Buddhism, “reversed swastika”=Nazi, logos on the door of bathroom
    (The relation between the signifier “swastika” and the signified “Buddhism” is conventionally fixed.)
  2. Index: “smoke”=fire, “↑” = up
    (The relation between the signifier and the signified is associative. SNYECDOCHE:  We lack of hands to finish to work. Hand = manual labor
    METONYMY: “The crown” as the king, “sweat” as hard labor)
  3. Symbol: “rose” as love, “rose” as Irish, “rose” as faith, etc.
    (The relation between signifier and the signified is arbitrary.)

Most of the imagists regard the “images” they create as verbal icons for specific feeling or complex of thought.

 

The “image” in Imagism

•         T. E. Hulmle maintained that real communication between human beings is made only by means of images.

•         Most imagists believed that the real “freedom” of “free verse” lied in the subject—the image—of the poem.

•         “It is the visual content of language, then, which makes it communicative, and it is the visual accuracy of poetry which makes it more communicative than prose.

•         Hulme: “ Images in verse are not mere decoration, but the very essence of an intuitive language.”

•         “Imagist poetry aimed at complete objectivity, leaving all rational and moral comment, for behind it was the belief that only the image communicated meaning.”

•         “Imagist poems, like the haiku, were meant to be read and re-read, to be meditated upon, until the full significance of the image had communicated itself.

--William Pratt, The Imagist Poem

 

Some Imagist Rules

According to Ezra Pound:

  1. To use the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word.
  2. To create new rhythms—as the expression of new moods.
  3. To allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject.
  4. To present an image.
  5. To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred nor indefinite.
  6. Concentration is the very essence of poetry.

--William Pratt, The Imagist Poem, 22

Imagism vs. Symbolism

“The Symbolists used image as part of a poem; the Imagists thought of an image as a complete poem. The Symbolists tried for diffuseness and suggestiveness; the Imagists insisted on concentration and directiveness.” William Pratt, The Imagist Poem.