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This article offers a book-historical study of text-interpretive frontispiece illustrations that accompanied eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century editions of James Thomson's The Seasons. It discusses these editions as constituting a commodity group of its own and as separate from those that featured sets of multiple illustrations and argues that the cost-effectiveness of these editions ensured widespread consumption. The relative cheapness of these editions, once Andrew Millar's copyright monopoly related to The Seasons had come to an end, stimulated formal experimentation and innovation that contrasted with older practices of reprinting and the opportunistic recycling of illustrations. The article traces not only the development of frontispiece formats but also how bookseller-publishers moved from allegorical to realist-sentimental modes of representation, in the process creating iconic lenses through which reader-viewers would apprehend Thomson's work. Paying attention to the strategies of competitive marketing as part of which publishers sought to differentiate their own edition from others on the market, the article concentrates on small-format editions featuring frontispieces that were published from 1780 and studies the ways in which frontispieces in these editions functioned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2016 one of my research topics has been the Baltic German reception of English poetry through the lens of cultural historical book collections in Estonia. One of my findings has been that James Thomson's The Seasons belonged among the most often received works of English poetry by Baltic Germans in Estonia, after James Macpherson's Poems of Ossian and John Milton's Paradise Lost and followed by Edward Young's Night-Thoughts. (Kaur 2018: 375) Except for Milton's, these works are almost unknown to modern Estonian readers. Therefore a few words to introduce Thomson and his famous work should be said. James Thomson (1700-1748) was an 18th century Scottish poet and playwright. Son of a Presbyterian minister, he studied at the College of Edinburgh to become a minister (1715-1719). However, very soon he found that preaching was not his calling and moved in 1725 to London to commit himself to literary work. There he created his poetic tetralogy in blank verse Winter (first published in 1726), Summer (1727), Spring (1728) and Autumn, which appeared together under the title The Seasons in 1730 (revised version in 1744). Enthusiastic, patriotic and full of love for flora, fauna, people, landscapes and everchanging weather conditions of his surroundings, but also of the wider world, it was received with great admiration by his British compatriots. But not only them: a new fresh interest in nature and especially in the phenomenon of the seasons as well the wish to describe and express them through poetry and other artistic means can be traced in Europe. Some years before Thomson the famous Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi had created his violin concerto The Four Seasons (1718) and a German poet and senator from the city of Hamburg, Barthold Hinrich Brockes, had started to publish his series Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott (Earthly Delight in God) (1721-1748) in which he meticulously described many objects from and views of nature as God's creations, inspired by English and Dutch physical theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbal images are immanent for fiction texts. Many features of verbal images are difficult to understand for foreigners. The paper considers grammatical structure of verbal images as a source of a possible perceptive failure. Strategies for foreign students to overcome difficulties in understanding lexical, grammatical and imagery structure of the text are described. Experimental data on the perception of “grammar” of verbal images by foreign students is provided. Activities for developing skills in comprehension ‘grammar’ of verbal images for intermediate students are suggested. Verbal images of the poem “Birch” by S.A. Esenin are analyzed as an example.

Focusing on his illustrative output in the 1750s, the essay will introduce the two largely neglected principal works that the Saxon illustrator and engraver, Gottlieb Leberecht Crusius, undertook in that decade, while still in his 20s. It will contextualise his illustrations for the second, 1753 edition of Hermann, oder das befreyte Deutschland, a patriotic epic poem by Christoph Otto von Schönaich, and his plates for Johann Franz von Palten's 1758 translation of James Thomson's The Seasons, concentrating especially on his style evolution and his adoption of a Rococo aesthetic. The essay establishes Crusius's significance for eighteenth-century German book illustration and his participation in the transnational Rococo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a relief of Selene and Endymion on a marble slab found in the courtyard of Knežji dvorec (Princes’ Palace) in Celje (Cilli in German in the early literature). The best comparisons to Selene (half-naked, holding a whip or a sceptre) can be found on the remnants of Vespasianic wall-painting from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and partially also on the much later mosaic from Uthina. Endymion and Eros, on the other hand, are better compared to the so-called first class of Roman Endymion-sarcophagi, dating to around AD 120–180. On the right lateral side is a winged childish figure, holding a covered basket, who in my opinion most likely represents one of the Seasons in the form of Erotes that were especially widespread in the second half of the 2nd century. The marble slab was originally a constituent part of the base of a larger aedicula tomb. Vera Kolšek drew attention to a badly damaged relief of Rhea Silvia and Mars, immured as spolium in a residential house at Prešernova ulica 10 in Celje. Both narrative reliefs share almost identical dimensions and similar compositions, and last but not least, both pairs of lovers are occasionally found side by side on Roman funerary sculpture and could therefore be part of the same tomb – either on the left or right corner.

This article combines readings of The Seasons' many mazes and amazements with a survey of labyrinths in contemporary British landscape design and literature. In doing so it reassesses recent accounts of the poem's ideological perspectives and demonstrates the wider importance of maze allusions in early eighteenth-century literature. Figuring the Creation as a maze allowed authors of this period to represent nature's intricate concordia discors while harnessing the prestige of canonical poetry. In The Seasons, James Thomson uses similar strategies to establish the primacy of poetry over nature and so facilitate interventions into controversial topics such as theodicy and party politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research focuses on conceptual TIME metaphors in Kristijonas Donelaitis’s The Seasons in order to supplement a so far scarce research in Lithuania of conceptual metaphors in translation, as time metaphors constitute fundamental aspects of culture and communication (Lakoff, Turner 1989). The present research aims to 1) analyze conceptual time metaphors in The Seasons and systemize them; 2) determine whether the metaphors are preserved in the translations of The Seasons: into Spanish (Caro Dugo 2013), English (Tempest 1985) and German (Passarge 1999). Text fragments were selected from The Seasons with hyponyms of the time concept which were analyzed based on the methodology of conceptual metaphors. Linguistic aspects of conceptual metaphors were compared with the mentioned translations. All the examples were analyzed based on the methodology of translation of linguistic aspects of conceptual metaphors as specified by Kövecses (2005). The following conceptual time metaphors were found in The Seasons: TIME IS OBJECT, TIME IS VOLUME, TIME IS LIMITED RIGHTS, TIME IS PLANT, TIME IS FOOD, TIME IS FESTIVAL, TIME IS MOVING OBJECT, TIME IS CHARACTER, TIME IS HUMAN, TIME IS ANIMAL. By comparing the linguistic aspects of the conceptual time metaphors in The Seasons by Donelaitis and the way they are rendered across several languages, it was determined that most often the conceptual metaphor in translation is preserved, i.e. the conceptual metaphor as well as its literal and figurative meaning are the same in both the original text and the translation. Only one case was found when the literal meaning and the underlying conceptual metaphors were different in the original and all three translations; however, the figurative meaning is maintained. In some cases the conceptual metaphor and its linguistic expression are different in the original text and the translation. Such cases probably occur due to the fact that the translator chooses a different source domain, which changes the conceptual metaphor and the mappings. Another reason could be concerned with the translator’s decision to distance himself/herself from the original due to linguistic and cultural aspects or text-specific factors.

The lapse of Andrew Millar's copyright for James Thomson's The Seasons in 1765 resulted in an increasing number of new editions of the poem being published in the late eighteenth century. This article compares the print-cultural make-ups of three editions of The Seasons that were issued in the 1790s. An examination of the print-cultural differences between these publishing ventures reveals distinct editorial practices and marketing strategies. In an attempt to increase the attractiveness of their editions with visual and textual paraphernalia, the producers developed their own 'versions' of The Seasons and, in the process, fashioned new interpretations of Thomson's poem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Eighteenth-century generic experimentation frequently culminated in new generic constructs that incorporated a range of earlier modes and formal models. One of these novel forms is the mid-eighteenth-century tragic-sentimental verse tale which was paradigmatically developed by James Thomson (1700–1748), the author of The Seasons, who introduced his tale of Celadon and Amelia in Summer. The popularity of the story resulted in a range of imitations, and this essay undertakes an examination of the formal and modal properties of some of these by poets such as James Grainger, William Falconer, Edmund Cartwright and William Wordsworth. The transformative changes that each author introduced to Thomson's model reflect the complex adaptation process to which genres were subjected as they were appropriated by later, Romantic-period writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]