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Sentimental Virtue and the Absence of Poetic Unity in James Thomson’s “Winter” of The Seasons
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James Thomson’s The Seasons, despite its enormous popularity in the eighteenth century, is nearly forgotten among modern readers, primarily because the poem exposes incoherence and contradictions, and does not present itself as a unity. Even a cursory glance at the history of criticism regarding The Seasons shows various efforts to restore order to the poem, inviting the question as to why Thomson was not concerned about poetic unity. The seeming lack of concern for an organic unity may come from various conflicting ideas within the poem, but this paper focuses on the moral scheme in “Winter,” and suggests that the absence of poetic unity also engages with the poet’s moral vision. Thompson reveals himself to be a sentimentalist by building upon an idea of virtue as sympathy for the unforunate. He also adopts a sentimental way to justify the social necessity of virtue by appealing to emotions with the stark contrast between the miserable death of a swain and the extravagant lives of those who enjoy worldly pleasures. Thompson’s awareness that his society suffers from moral corruption makes him promote virtue as a remedy for social ills, leaving the moral significance of virtue ambiguous, because his undaunted belief in morality reduces excellence or goodness to a social duty. However, he does not settle the conceptual conundrum of virtue with further discussion of morality; instead, he endeavors to advocate it by appealing to emotions, or more precisely, by describing the emotive scene of wolves raiding innocent victims. In exposing the sentimentality of virtue again, he posits his ideal agency of virtue as the ability to feel emotions running the gamut from fear of society without virtue to sympathy for the miserable. Assuming that poetry performs its social mission by arousing feelings and presenting readers with opportunities to interpret them in terms of morality, Thompson does not tackle theoretical questions as part of a moral scheme but seeks rather to maximize the emotiveness of scenes at the cost of textual unity.
Abstract
James Thomson’s The Seasons, despite its enormous popularity in the eighteenth century, is nearly forgotten among modern readers, primarily because the poem exposes incoherence and contradictions, and does not present itself as a unity. Even a cursory glance at the history of criticism regarding The Seasons shows various efforts to restore order to the poem, inviting the question as to why Thomson was not concerned about poetic unity. The seeming lack of concern for an organic unity may come from various conflicting ideas within the poem, but this paper focuses on the moral scheme in “Winter,” and suggests that the absence of poetic unity also engages with the poet’s moral vision. Thompson reveals himself to be a sentimentalist by building upon an idea of virtue as sympathy for the unforunate. He also adopts a sentimental way to justify the social necessity of virtue by appealing to emotions with the stark contrast between the miserable death of a swain and the extravagant lives of those who enjoy worldly pleasures. Thompson’s awareness that his society suffers from moral corruption makes him promote virtue as a remedy for social ills, leaving the moral significance of virtue ambiguous, because his undaunted belief in morality reduces excellence or goodness to a social duty. However, he does not settle the conceptual conundrum of virtue with further discussion of morality; instead, he endeavors to advocate it by appealing to emotions, or more precisely, by describing the emotive scene of wolves raiding innocent victims. In exposing the sentimentality of virtue again, he posits his ideal agency of virtue as the ability to feel emotions running the gamut from fear of society without virtue to sympathy for the miserable. Assuming that poetry performs its social mission by arousing feelings and presenting readers with opportunities to interpret them in terms of morality, Thompson does not tackle theoretical questions as part of a moral scheme but seeks rather to maximize the emotiveness of scenes at the cost of textual unity.
참고문헌 (24)
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