Frye, Baker, and Perkins--Symbols

Literary Symbols

from Frye, Baker, and Perkins

The information quoted from this article is highlighted in blue. If I have paraphrased information, I highlighted it in orange. Some of the information given here is repeated in other sources, and by reading the same ideas repeatedly, they became part of my own understanding and are reflected in the essay I wrote. But anything that I consciously took from these sources is documented in my work.

Symbolism A term ordinarily applied to self-conscious uses more common in literature than in written or oral communication generally. In this sense, symbolism is a heightened use of symbol, presenting the word first for its ordinary signification (as when the word rose stands for the flower rose) and then for some idea lying behind the ordinary signification (as when the word rose stands for the flower rose, which stands for beauty).

Symbols used in this way fall into three classes. (1) Natural symbols present things not for themselves, but for the ideas people commonly associate with them: a star for hope, a cloud for despair, night for death, a sunrise for a new beginning. (2) Conventional symbols present things for the meanings people within a particular group have agreed to give them: a national flag for the ideas of home or patriotism associated with it, or a Christian cross or star of David for the associations they evoke in people familiar with the appropriate religion. (3) Literary symbols sometimes build upon natural or conventional symbols, adding meanings appropriate primarily within the work at hand, but sometimes they also create meanings within a work for things that have no natural or conventional meaning outside it, as Melville does with his white whale, for instance.

Frye, Northrop, Sheridan Baker, and George Perkins. The Harper Handbook to Literature. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. 452-453.