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.

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 i...

James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary is the first collection of essays devoted exclusively to the works of the eighteenth-century Scottish poet James Thomson. The volume is divided into two sections, the first addressing Thomson’s writings themselves, and the second the reception of his works after his death and their influence on later writers. The first section contains essays analyzing the politics and aesthetics of Thomson’s major poems and also a reevaluation of Thomson as a heroic dramatist. The second section capitalizes on the certainty felt by many in Thomson’s own century that the poet, especially through his most successful poem The Seasons, had won for himself an indelible fame. This volume provides a definitive reappraisal of his achievement for our own times.

Background of Thomson's Seasons was first published in 1942. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. There have been many valuable scattered studies of James Thomson's famous Seasons,but this is the first comprehensive book on the subject to be published in this country. This most popular long poem published in England in the eighteenth century well deserves reexamination. It is interesting not only to students of literature but also to those concerned with the history of ideas and the relationship of the fields of human knowledge. Thomson's Seasons reflects the trends of his time in literature, philosophy, science, history, and religion. Professor McKillop presents an illuminating and systematic analysis of the general philosophic and literary situation in which Thomson worked. Then he discusses Thomson's use of the natural sciences and of the literature of history, geography, and travel. He shows that the poet was also concerned with the patterns of human society, both primitive and civilized. The author reveals clearly how Thomson was indebted to the classical tradition; to the literary inspiration of Milton; to the scientific discussions and theories of Newton, Halley, Burnet, and the writers of popular physico-theological manuals; to the philosophical discussions of Shaftesbury and Locke; to the contemporary periodical essay; to the religious works of Blackmore and Hill; to the descriptions of remote regions and peoples in such writers as Scheffer, Varenius, and Maupertuis. All Thomson's borrowings and characteristic ideas fall into the framework of his poem. As this book was leaving the bindery, discovery was made in Glasgow of a catalogue of Thomson's library. The document substantiates many of Professor McKillop's deductions.

"You could cook non-stop from this book for, indeed, a year, without ever getting bored! With over 200 recipes, and with an expansive flavour palette, it is a boon for those in a cooking rut." – Nigella Lawson "this book is very timely... and there are so many wantable dishes here... Among the dishes calling me are sausage and fennel focaccia rolls; squash baked with beer, cheese, cream and pretzels; and cherry Bakewell pudding." – Diana Henry, Telegraph "What a beauty... imaginative, appealing recipes grounded in good sense... you can taste the experience, that these are lived recipes." – Rachel Roddy "the one cook book you really need this autumn is this practical work from the ever-inventive Thomson" – Independent "One of my tests of how much I am excited by a new cookbook is how many recipes I feel driven to mark with a Post-It note. With Home Cookery Year I suddenly realised I was Post-It noting nearly every page." – Bee Wilson Home Cookery Year is the new essential kitchen bible, year-round and every day. Claire Thomson writes foolproof, imaginative recipes to please the whole family – as a professional chef and mum of three, she understands what it’s like to whip up tasty, crowd-pleasing dishes in minimal time at the end of a busy working day. Wearing its seasonality lightly, with the emphasis on usefulness and practicality, Home Cookery Year offers mealtime solutions for: midweek emergencies cooking on a budget on a budget and storecupboard recipes salads and light lunches treat yourself (indulgent dishes for special occasions) celebration feasts Every recipe you will ever need is in here, for every occasion, with twists on classics, and super ideas for jaded palates for young and old alike.

A Companion to Scottish Literature offers fresh readings of major authors and periods of Scottish literary production from the first millennium to the present. Bringing together contributions by many of the world’s leading experts in the field, this comprehensive resource provides the historical background of Scottish literature, highlights new critical approaches, and explores wider cultural and institutional contexts. Dealing with texts in the languages of Scots, English, and Gaelic, the Companion offers modern perspectives on the historical milieux, thematic contexts and canonical writers of Scottish literature. Original essays apply the most up-to-date critical and scholarly analyses to a uniquely wide range of topics, such as Gaelic literature, national and diasporic writing, children’s literature, Scottish drama and theatre, gender and sexuality, and women’s writing. Critical readings examine William Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark and Carol Ann Duffy, amongst others. With full references and guidance for further reading, as well as numerous links to online resources, A Companion to Scottish Literature is essential reading for advanced students and scholars of Scottish literature, as well as academic and non-academic readers with an interest in the subject.

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Every ending marks a potential beginning; every act of reading is, in a very real sense an act of re-writing; and to revise is, literally, to re-see. These bits of conventional wisdom underlie the topic explored in this volume's collection of essays by literary critics who want to know more about the instinct to continue and the impulse to revise an existing text.

What did Romantic writers mean when they wrote about "progress" and "perfection"? This book shows how Romantic writers inventively responded to familiar ideas about political progress which they inherited from the eighteenth century. Whereas earlier writers such as Voltaire and John Millar likened improvements in political institutions to the progress of the sciences or refinement of manners, the novelists, poets, and political theorists examined in this book reimagined politically progressive thinking in multiple genres. While embracing a commitment to optimistic improvement—increasing freedom, equality, and protection from injury—they also cultivated increasingly visible and volatile energies of religious and political dissent. Earlier narratives of progress tended not only to edit and fictionalize history but also to agglomerate different modes of knowledge and practice in their quest to describe and prescribe uniform cultural improvement. But romantic writers seize on internal division and take it less as an occasion for anxiety, exclusion, or erasure, and more as an impetus to rethink the groundwork of progress itself. Political entities, from Percy Shelley's plans for political reform to Charlotte Smith's motley associations of strangers in The Banished Man, are progressive because they advance some version of collective utility or common good. But they simultaneously stake a claim to progress only insofar as they paradoxically solicit contending vantage points on the criteria for the very public benefit which they passionately pursue. The "majestic edifices" of Wordsworth's imagined university in The Prelude embrace members who are "republican or pious," not to mention the recalcitrant "enthusiast" who is the poet himself.