What is Symbolism/Symbolist Movement?

There is a trend in modern literature to have recourse to the use of certain things or elements to represent or mark certain aspects or matters. The particular thing is the ' symbol' 'a rose' may well be used to indicate beauty, ' white' of 'purity'. These symbols may be used to indicate beauty and purity respectively. Similarly, any other element may be dexterously exploited symbolically by an author to express his her point of view or a certain shade of life, of course in a highly sophisticated manner. This trend is popularised as symbolism . This is a distinct feature particularly in Modern   English Poetry.  The English poetic recourse to symbolism is remarkably patent in Eliot's  The Waste Land, his Ariel Poems and a good many poems of W.B. Yeats.

Symbolism definitely leads to intricacy,  but,  at the same time, this proves engaging in the communication or manifestation of curtains poets or elements in a distinctly sophisticated manner.  Such a symbolic manner enhances the impressiveness another literary quality of the work concerned. 

The Symbolist Movement in Modern English Poetry appeared as a set of protest against the excessive romanticism of Georgian poetry at the early years of the twentieth century.  Of course, actually the symbolic movement started at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The chief exponent of the movement were the poets of France, England and even America. A Good many poets started using symbols in their writings to express the complexity of modern life and society, in the world, lost in mechanism and commercialism.