Parnassian poets

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The Parnassians were a group of 19th-century French poets, so called from their journal, the Parnasse contemporain, itself named after Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses in Greek mythology. Issued from 1866 to 1876, it included poems by Charles Leconte de Lisle, Théodore de Banville, Sully-Prudhomme, Paul Verlaine, François Coppée and José María de Heredia.

The Parnassians were influenced by Théophile Gautier and his doctrine of art for art's sake. In reaction to the looser forms of romantic poetry, they strove for exact and faultless workmanship, selecting exotic and classical subjects which they treated with rigidity of form and emotional detachment. Elements of this detachment were derived from the philosophical work of Arthur Schopenhauer.

Parnassianism did not restrict itself to France, though. Perhaps the most idiosyncratic of Parnassians, Olavo Bilac was an author from Brazil who managed to carefully craft verses and metre while still keeping a strong feel of emotion to them.

For some reason, Gerard Manley Hopkins used the term Parnassian to describe competent but uninspired poetry, where a talented poet is merely operating on auto-pilot. He identified this trend particularly in the work of Alfred Tennyson, citing the poem Enoch Arden as an example.

French Parnassianism had a decisive influence on the Latin American literary current known as Modernismo, whose leading light was the notable Nicaraguan poet, Rubén Darío.

Parnassian poets

See also