Melancholy's Ends: Thomson's Reveries.
One of the more divisive critical debates that has characterized the reception of James Thomson's famous locodescriptive poem The Seasons (1726–30) has centered around the question of the poem's social vision. One strain of critical responses sees the poem indulging a solipsism that obscures the suf...
| Publicado en: | Criticism Vol. 64; no. 1; pp. 1 - 26 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Wayne State University Press
Winter2022
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=157569218&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 157569218 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00111589 CIS jtl: Criticism issn: 00111589 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Winter2022 vid: 64 iid: 1 pid: 426 pub: Wayne State University Press artinfo: ui: 157569218 10.1353/crt.2022.0002 ppf: 1 ppct: 25 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 316KB tig: atl: Melancholy's Ends: Thomson's Reveries. aug: au: Williams, Jonathan C. su: Melancholy in literature Poetry (Literary form) Seasons, The (Poem : Thomson) Solitude Thomson, James, 1700-1748 Poverty sug: subj: Melancholy in literature Poetry (Literary form) Seasons, The (Poem : Thomson) Solitude Thomson, James, 1700-1748 Poverty keyword: critique melancholy solitude Thomson ab: One of the more divisive critical debates that has characterized the reception of James Thomson's famous locodescriptive poem The Seasons (1726–30) has centered around the question of the poem's social vision. One strain of critical responses sees the poem indulging a solipsism that obscures the suffering of the poor in a newly commercialized Britain, whereas other responses see the poem as setting forth a vision of social harmony and a critique of social conditions. In this piece, I argue that, for Thomson, the feeling of melancholy —a mood that performs solitude, genial pensiveness, and sympathy—stages the difficulty of knowing how to sympathize with the rural poor or how to protest the social conditions that lead to poverty, and aestheticizes social life so as better to understand it. To abstract social conditions under the aegis of a stylized melancholy is to run the risk of mischaracterizing or even evading those conditions. Crucially, though, for Thomson, melancholic feeling is not in itself the solution to social problems, but is important because of its staging of the difficulties of critical responses to those problems. The lesson of Thomson's melancholy is that solutions to social problems do not always emerge straightforwardly, but instead in awkward fits and starts. In this way, I argue, the potentially inoperative nature of the critical positions put forth by the melancholic mood may also be the very sign of their force. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Criticism is the property of Wayne State University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Criticism holder: Wayne State University Press dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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