The Genres of Thomson’s The Seasons

The Genres of Thomson’s The Seasons brings together contributions examining the different generic modes and discourses in Thomson’s descriptive long poem. It aims to provide a better understanding of the generic remit of The Seasons and of the transformation of poetic genres in the eighteenth century in general.

Critics since the eighteenth century have puzzled over the form of James Thomson’s composite long poem, The Seasons (1730, 1744, 1746), its generically hybrid make-up, and its relationship to established genres both Classical and modern. The textual condition of the work is complicated by the fact that it started as a stand-alone poem, Winter (1726), but was subsequently expanded—as part of a revision process that lasted almost two decades—through the addition of three further seasons poems. Transforming from primarily devotional poem to georgic account of the role of man’s laboring role in the creation, the meaning of The Seasons shifted with each addition of new material. Each revision introduced diverse subject matter while existing material was reorganized and occasionally moved from one season installment to another.

The Genres of Thomson’s The Seasons is the first collection of essays exclusively devoted to the study of the work’s formal heterogeneity, polyvocality, and polygeneric character. All contributions examine the different modes (descriptive, reflective, pastoral, hymnal, amatory, epic, georgic, dramatic), discourses (political, sentimental, scientific), and kinds that cooperate to make up the different installments and variants of The Seasons. They probe the multifarious interactions between different genres and modes and how a renewed focus on the form of Thomson’s long poem will result in an understanding of the processual character of The Seasons as a synthesizing simulacrum of various discourses and theories of composition.

The volume’s essays map the generic anatomy of the poem in its different incarnations. They shed light on the poet’s conception of the descriptive long poem and his engaging with formal traditions that would have enabled contemporaneous readers to conceive of The Seasons as an assimilating and learned work to be read through both the works of the Classics and moderns. Contributions revisit models explaining the structural complexity of The Seasons, proposing others in their stead, and consider Thomson as the author of a long poem in relation to other poets both English and (in a transnational study) Swedish. The poem is furthermore contextualized in terms of sexuality and animal studies.

A Note on the Text

List of Figures

Introduction

Sandro Jung & Kwinten Van De Walle

Structure and Form: The Making of the Long Poem

Chapter One: Richard Blackmore, James Thomson, Alexander Pope and the Creation of the Eighteenth-Century Long Poem

Carson Bergstrom

Chapter Two: Poetic Description and the Formation of Genre: Thomson’s Summer and Mallet’s The Excursion

Sandro Jung

Chapter Three: From Inter- to Intratextuality: “Autumn” as the Conclusion to The Seasons

Kwinten Van De Walle

Poetic Voice, Experimentation, and Generic Modulation

Chapter Four: The Lyric Self in The Seasons

Christopher R. Miller

Chapter Five: Eschatology and the Pindaric Ode in James Thomson’s Winter (1726)

Thomas Van der Goten

Chapter Six: Be-longing: Thomson’s “Soft Assemblage” and the Erotics of Genre

Kate Parker

Chapter Seven: The Articulation of Genre in The Seasons

Juan Christian Pellicer

Revisiting the Georgic

Chapter Eight: The Golden Age and Iron Times: Pastoral and Georgic in “Spring”

Tess Somervell

Chapter Nine: Fervent Bees, Dreaming Dogs, Human Insects, and Animal Fellowship in The Seasons: Thomson’s Revisionist Georgic Fauna and the Works of Peace

John D. Morillo

Chapter Ten: The European Georgic and the Politics of Genre: Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna and The Seasons in Sweden

Alfred Sjödin

Index

About the Contributors

About the Editors