Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in

poetry and other arts.

In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal.
The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were
a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was
developed by Stphane Mallarm and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1880s, the
aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The
name "symbolist" itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moras, who invented the term to
distinguish the Symbolists from the related Decadents of literature and of art.

Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to
the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism.