[‘ The physical equivalent or manifestation of an immaterial thing or abstract idea; spec. (and usually, following T. S. Eliot) the technique in art of representing or evoking a particular emotion by means of symbols, which become associated with and indicative of that emotion.']
Pronunciation: Brit. /əbˌdʒɛktɪv kəˈrɛlətɪv/, U.S. /əbˌdʒɛktɪv kəˈrɛlədɪv/, ɑbˌdʒɛktɪv kəˈrɛlədɪv, əbˌdʒɛkdɪv kəˈrɛlədɪv, ɑbˌdʒɛkdɪv kəˈrɛlədɪv
Etymology: < objective adj. + correlative n.
The physical equivalent or manifestation of an immaterial thing or abstract idea; spec. (and usually, following T. S. Eliot) the technique in art of representing or evoking a particular emotion by means of symbols, which become associated with and indicative of that emotion.
1850 W. Allston /Lect. Art, & Poems/ 16 No possible modification in the degrees or proportion of these elements [/sc./ air, earth, heat, water] can change the specific form of a plant… So, too, is the external world to the mind; which needs, also, as the condition of its manifestation, its objective correlative.
1909 /Jrnl. Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods/ *6* 587 An understanding which is merely the objective correlative of matter or causality.
1919 T. S. Eliot in /Athenæum/ 26 Sept. 941/1 The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.
1946 /Sewanee Rev./ *54* 301 In that Eliot proposes the objective correlative, ‘he accepts with the vast majority of his contemporaries the modern dogma that the artist is primarily concerned with emotion’.
1947 T. S. Eliot /Milton/ 7 Two or three phrases of my coinage—like ‘objective correlative’—which have had a success in the world astonishing to their author.
1951 H. Kenner /Poetry E. Pound/ viii. 66 It is easy to see why the objective correlative, the image as sensory equivalent of an emotion, the Aristotelian equation of a poem with an action, and Eliot’s claim that emotions the poet has never experienced will serve his turn as well as familiar ones, should seem in such eyes impossibly muddle-headed.
1957 W. K. Wimsatt & C. Brooks /Lit. Crit./ 676 A realization that Winters’ conception of poetry, like Eliot’s, is ultimately ‘dramatic’ need not impugn the useful distinction between motive (the reason for an emotion) and objective correlative (the symbol of an emotion).
1964 J. B. Leishman /Rilke’s New Poems/ 9 An essentially expounding poet..might still be continuously engaged in a search for ever new ‘objective correlatives’ for old and unchanged convictions.
1995 /Etc. Montréal/ 15 May 22/1 Tsai seems more interested in dissecting space as an objective correlative for character, an overarching emptiness in which solitary gestures and vacant expressions become all the more poignant.