从黑猫看爱伦坡的象征主义.doc

A Reflection of Symbolism in The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe Ⅰ. Introduction As a specific school of literary trend, symbolism appeared in French in the 1880s at first and mainly in the creative realm of poetry and drama. From the 1890s, symbolism spread to Britain, Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain and many other countries. In the 1920s, it became one of the most influential schools of literary and artistic trend in the world. The French poet Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) and the American poet Edgar Allan Poe are the pioneers of symbolism. Symbolism is distinguished into early and late symbolism. Stephan Mallarme (1842-1898), Paul Verlaine (1844-1896)，Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) are the representatives of early symbolism. Late symbolists include William Butler Yeats（1865－1939, T·S Eliot（1888－1965. In his famous long poem The Waste Land (1922), T·S Eliot constructed a sophisticated world by applying repeated images and symbols, rebelling against the English poetic tradition. Symbolism can also be divided into universal symbolism and contextual symbolism, depending on the source of the associations that provide their meaning. Universal symbols embody ideas or emotions that the writer and the reader share in common, as a result of their social and cultural heritage. For example, a stagnant pool may symbolize life being polluted or diminished. The color black symbolizes death, and white symbolizes purity, etc. Contextual symbols are those whose associations are neither immediate nor traditional; instead, they derive their meaning, largely if not exclusively, from the context of the work in which they are used. For instances, the rain symbolizes the God, the grail symbolizes superhuman strength, etc. The meaning is perplexing. The same thing may have different symbolic meanings according to certain context. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), is a famous American poet, short-story writer, and literary critic. Since adolescence, he had great interests in literature and had read a la