G.K. Chesterton on Art and Symbolic Language

Abstract

The present work aims to present G.K. Chesterton’s position on the nature of symbolic language and the specificity of art. The starting point is a group of essays dedicated to this subject, as well as the novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill, and particularly a book written in 1904 about the painter G.F. Watts, which has been recently translated into Spanish. The main questions to be addressed are the following two: a) If symbol and art are not a copy of reality, what is it that defines them? b) In what sense do poetic and pictorial languages perform a symbolic function?