• Aestheticism, late 19th-century European arts

movement which centred on the doctrine that

art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and
that it need serve no political, didactic, or other
purpose.
• Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a
number of philosophers since the 19th century
who, despite large differences in their positions,
generally focused on the condition of human
existence, and an individual’s emotions, actions,
responsibilities, and thoughts, or the meaning
or purpose of life. Existential philosophers often
focused more on what is subjective, such as
beliefs and religion, or human states, feelings,
and emotions, such as freedom, pain, guilt, and
regret, as opposed to analyzing objective
knowledge, language, or science.
• Nihilism is the belief that life has no meaning in
itself and that people play no significant role in
the universe
What is the meaning of life? People have been
asking this question from the beginning of time

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 and still disagree on the answer. Some believe
the meaning of life is found through religion,
virtue, or pleasure. Existential nihilism is the
belief that life is meaningless, and that
humankind plays no significant role in the
universe.
• Symbolism refers to the use of representational
imagery: the writer employs an image with a
deeper, non-literal meaning, for the purpose of
conveying complex ideas.

In literature, symbolism is the use of a concrete

image to represent an abstract idea.
For example, the heart is often employed as a
symbol of love.
• Dadaism was the first conceptual art movement
where the focus was not on crafting
aesthetically pleasing art, but on creating things
that challenged traditional art, the role of the
artists, and societal issues.In literature, this
came in the form of many unique poems and

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 whimsical, wit-infused writings. Some
characteristics of Dadaism’s most profound
characteristics include humor, whimsy, artistic
freedom, emotional reaction, irrationalism, and
spontaneity.
• Imagism A 20th century movement in poetry
advocating free verse and the expression of
ideas and emotions through clear precise
images
• Vers libre (French: “free verse”), 19th-century
poetic innovation that liberated French poetry
from its traditional prosodic rules. In vers libre,
the basic metrical unit is the phrase rather than
a line of a fixed number of syllables, as was
traditional in French versification since the
Middle Ages. In vers libre, the lengths of lines
may vary according to the sense of the poem,
the complete sentence replaces the stanza as a
unit of meaning, and rhyme is optional.
• Psychological fiction (or psychological realism) is
a genre of literature in which writers delve into
the interiority (or “inner person”) of a

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 character’s mind and motivation rather than
focusing on external actions or motivators.
• Collage : describes both the technique and the
resulting work of art in which pieces of paper,
photographs, fabric and other ephemera are
arranged and stuck down onto a supporting
surface
• Impressionism : in literature refers to stories
dependent on a character’s subjective point of
view. These stories are based around that
character’s impressions of their experiences.
The context, details, and interpretive meaning
of various plot points are secondary to their
experience of them. The edges of what’s true
and what’s false or what’s real and what’s fake
are blurred because the reader depends entirely
on the character’s feelings to understand the
story. This often means that these narrators can
be defined as unreliable. Impressionism is
notoriously hard to comprehend and define as it
depends so heavily on impressions.

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 • Expressionism was a literary and artistic
reaction against realism and naturalism. Writers
were interested in emotion and psychology.
Whether in writing or in visual arts, those who
practiced expressionism did so to explore
spiritual reality.