Symbolist Aesthetics and Early Abstract Art
Sites of Imaginary Space

This book presents an innovative analysis of the role of imagination as a central concept in both literary and art criticism. Dee Reynolds brings this approach to bear on works by Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Kandinsky, and Mondrian.

Dee Reynolds (Author)

9780521619356, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 February 2005

312 pages, 25 b/w illus.
24.7 x 19 x 1.7 cm, 0.554 kg

This book presents an innovative analysis of the role of imagination as a central concept in both literary and art criticism. Dee Reynolds brings this approach to bear on works by Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Kandinsky, and Mondrian. It allows her to redefine the relationship between Symbolism and abstract art, and to contribute new methodological perspectives to comparative studies of poetry and painting. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a crucial period in the emergence of new modes of representation, and is currently at the forefront of critical enquiry. This is the first book to examine Symbolism and abstraction in this way, and the first to treat these poets and painters together. It is an original contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship in art history, literary history, and comparative aesthetics.

List of illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. Imagination and imaginary space
2. Verbal hallucination: Rimbaud's poetics of rhythm
3. Reflections in black and white: Mallarmé and the act of writing
4. Putting the spectator in the picture: Kandinsky's pictorial world
5. Between the lines: form and transformation in Mondrian
6. Universal exceptions: sites of imaginary space
Conclusion
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]