Symbol

In the simplest sense, anything that stands for or represents
something else beyond it—usually an idea conventionally associated
with it. Objects like flags and crosses can function symbolically; and
words are also symbols. In the *SEMIOTICS of C. S. Peirce, the term
denotes a kind of *SIGN that has no natural or resembling connection
with its referent, only a conventional one: this is the case with words. In
literary usage, however, a symbol is a specially evocative kind of image
(see imagery); that is, a word or phrase referring to a concrete object,
Symbolic, the 252
scene, or action which also has some further significance associated with
it: roses, mountains, birds, and voyages have all been used as common
literary symbols. A symbol differs from a *METAPHOR in that its
application is left open as an unstated suggestion: thus in the sentence
She was a tower of strength, the metaphor ties a concrete image (the
'vehicle': tower) to an identifiable abstract quality (the *TENOR: strength).
Similarly, in the systematically extended metaphoric parallels of
*ALLEGORY, the images represent specific meanings: at the beginning of
Langland's allegorical poem Piers Plowman (c.1380), the tower seen by the
dreamer is clearly identified with the quality of Truth, and it has no
independent status apart from this function. But the symbolic tower in
Robert Browning's poem ' "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" '
(1855), or that in W. B. Yeat's collection of poems The Tower (1928),
remains mysteriously indeterminate in its possible meanings. It is
therefore usually too simple to say that a literary symbol 'stands for'
some idea as if it were just a convenient substitute for a fixed meaning; it
is usually a substantial image in its own right, around which further
significances may gather according to differing interpretations. The
term symbolism refers to the use of symbols, or to a set of related
symbols; however, it is also the name given to an important movement
in late 19th-century and early 20th-century poetry: for this sense, see
Symbolists. One of the important features of *ROMANTICISM and
succeeding phases of Western literature was a much more pronounced
reliance upon enigmatic symbolism in both poetry and prose fiction,
sometimes involving obscure private codes of meaning, as in the poetry
of Blake or Yeats. A well-known early example of this is the albatross in
Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1798). Many novelists—
notably Herman Melville and D. H. Lawrence—have used symbolic
methods: in Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) the White Whale (and indeed
almost every object and character in the book) becomes a focus for many
different suggested meanings. Melville's extravagant symbolism was
encouraged partly by the importance which American
*TRANSCENDENTALISM gave to symbolic interpretation of the world. Verb:
symbolize. 
From the corpora - [Chris_Baldick]_The_Concise_Oxford_Dictionary_of_L(BookFi.org)