Parnassian

French literature

Also known as: Parnassien

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History

Parnassian, member of a group—headed by Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle—of 19th-century French poets who stressed restraint, objectivity, technical perfection, and precise description as a reaction against the emotionalism and verbal imprecision of the Romantics.

The poetic movement led by the Parnassians that resulted in experimentation with metres and verse forms and the revival of the sonnet paralleled the trend toward realism in drama and the novel that became evident in the late 19th century. Initially taking their themes from contemporary society, the Parnassians later turned to the mythology, epics, and sagas of exotic lands and past civilizations, notably India and ancient Greece. The Parnassians derived their name from the anthology to which they contributed: Le Parnasse Contemporain (3 vol., 1866, 1871, 1876), edited by Louis-Xavier de Ricard and Catulle Mendès and published by Alphonse Lemerre. Their principles, though, had been formulated earlier in Théophile Gautier’s preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), which expounded the theory of art for art’s sake, in Leconte de Lisle’s preface to his Poèmes antiques (1852), and in La Revue Fantaisiste (1860), founded by Mendès. Gautier’s Émaux et camées (1852), a collection of carefully constructed, formally perfect poems, pointed to a new conception of poetry and influenced the works of major Parnassians such as Albert-Alexandre Glatigny, Théodore de Banville, François Coppée, Léon Dierx, and José Maria de Heredia. Heredia, the most representative of the group, looked for precise details, double rhymes, sonorous words, and exotic names, and concentrated on making the 14th line of his sonnets the most striking.

The influence of the Parnassians was felt throughout Europe and was particularly evident in the Modernist movement of Spain and Portugal and in the Jeune Belgique (“Young Belgium”) movement (see La Jeune Belgique). Many former Parnassians became part of the Symbolist movement in the late 19th century.

Open copy of Voltaire's Candide showing pages 242 and 243, with text in French and rough, untrimmed page edges, bound in its original blue-paper wrapper.

Parnassian

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