31 - Literature and the arts

Summary

The many innovative relationships between literature and the arts encompassed a proliferation of illustrated texts and graphic works carrying captions; and connections between the visual, theatrical and musical arts. Literary support for the arts was facilitated by authors having direct knowledge of art themselves as well as close friendships with artists. This chapter describes a development from art and literature based on sensation, Romanticism, to one based on form, Realism, Pre-Raphaelitism and Victorian art, the analysis of effect, Naturalist literature and Impressionist art, symbol, Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, and the dynamic fusion of space and time, Cubism and Futurism. Analogies between colour and music recurred throughout the nineteenth century, from Delacroix's expression of mood and content to Whistler's abstracting harmonies from nature. For some Symbolist authors the plunge into subjective intuition was, paradoxically, directed towards a metaphysical consciousness of space and time in the external world.