symbol

Question 1

symbol

Answer 1

something that stands for something else

Question 2

the invented symbol

Answer 2

poems sometimes create a symbol out of a thing, action or event that has no previously agreed-upon symbolical significance

Question 3

the traditional symbol

Answer 3

• symbols by built-in significance because of past usage
  in literature/tradition/stories a culture develops to
  explain itself and its beliefs
• such things have acquired an agreed-upon
  significance/accepted value
• poets may use traditional symbols to invoke
  predictable responses → shortcuts to meaning by
  repeating acts of signification sanctioned by time and
  cultural habit
• often poets examine the tradition and sometimes they
  revise or reverse traditional, expected meanings
• symbols do not necessarily stay the same over time

Question 4

the symbolic poem

Answer 4

• sometimes symbols become so insistent in a poem
  that the larger referential world is left almost totally
  behind → poem doesn’t use symbols but becomes a
  symbolic poem using a system introduced by the poet
• understanding a symbolic poem depends on
  knowledge of context