parnassianism

parnassianism means A French literary style which began during the positivist period of the 19th century. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.

Why “parnassianism” is a great word

PARNASSIANISM — [Noun] A French literary movement of the late 19th century that championed formal perfection, objective description, and art for art's sake. From Parnassian (from Latin Parnassius, "of Parnassus," the mountain sacred to Apollo and the Muses) + the suffix -ism, denoting a movement or system. Unlike Romanticism, which exalts emotional effusion and the sublime, or Symbolism, which traffics in evasive suggestion and metaphor, Parnassianism is a doctrine of chiseled objectivity and classical restraint. It is the cold gleam of marble under museum light, the precisely observed vein on a leaf rendered in flawless alexandrines, and the poet as a lapidary carving an intaglio—a quiet faith that beauty, rendered permanent, is meaning enough.

Etymology

From Parnassian + -ism.

noun

A French literary style which began during the positivist period of the 19th century.“The leading poets of Parnassianism, like Machado, were utterly respectable and middle classs, good family men; many were bureaucrats, and they were proud that they had freed poets from "the obligation to wear their hair long" (Bilac, in Broca, 1960:7). Symbolism was enormously influential in almost every other Western culture; it never had a chance in Brazil, in a literary world dominated by Parna”