1 See Chalker 1969: 90-139. Chalker mentions the “apparent flabbiness in the structure” and adds that “the various episodes of the poem are not linked by an easily perceived structural thread” (92). AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 32 (2007) Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Generic Hybridity and Structural Technique in James Thomson’s Spring (1728) Sandro Jung In attempts to explain and account for the immethodical, irregular, and supposedly fragmented form of James Thomson’s The Seasons scholars have repeatedly discerned thematic and ideational patterns in the poem rather than tracing its generic diversity and acknowledging its formal integrity. Following Alastair Fowler’s notions of kind and mode, The Seasons is contextualised in generic terms as a long poem which draws on the conventions and utilises elements of the epic and the ode to create a novel poetic kind. The interplay between the discursive and the expository, the descriptive and narrative elements of the epic and the dramatic qualities of the lyric modes is traced in one of the seasons, Spring (1728). The exploration of the generic hybridity of the poem will make visible the formal and generic cohesion of Thomson’s composite The Seasons and enable a better understanding of the long poem generally. The mid-eighteenth-century long poem is best and in greatest complexity represented by James Thomson’s The Seasons and its revisions. While the idea of the long poem as a poetic genre is a twentieth-century effort of scholars to come to terms with an elusive form that finds a variety of expressions in the eighteenth century, there has never been a sustained attempt at defining the generic hybridity of the poem, its formal characteristics or its poetic techniques (see, for instance, Sportelli 1999). Alastair Fowler, like John Chalker, understands The Seasons in terms of the “modal extensions of georgic” (Fowler 1982: 108). 1 Others have related the poem to the epic Sandro Jung 56 2 See Steinman 1998: 9-41. tradition and especially to Milton. 2 Ralph Cohen, on the other hand, notes that it “was not […] either a Georgic or a scientific-didactic poem, and, although it had features of the epic, it was not an epic in any traditional sense” (Cohen 1960: 92). Fowler reaches the conclusion that Thomson “invented [a] strikingly novel ‘species’” which was “nevertheless acceptable to neoclassical critics” (Fowler 1982: 29), thereby placing him at the centre of the monogenesis of the long poem. The novelty of the genre that Thomson created with The Seasons, however, reflects the scholarly dilemma that a “new genre almost ipse facto lacks any agreed label” (Fowler 1982: 131). While a genre is characterised by a number of typical modal qualities, its validity also depends on inherent requirements of form that are prominently used in any denominated genre. Fowler in Kinds of Literature insists that “the kinds, however elusive, objectively exist. Their boundaries may not be hardedged, but they can nonetheless exclude. This is shown by the fact that features are often characteristic through their absence” (Fowler 1982: 73). In that respect, Barbara Kiefer Lewalski has usefully reconsidered Paradise Lost and its uses of genre. She holds that Milton included a “panoply of kinds” (Lewalski 1999: 114) in Paradise Lost which was not conceived of as a “mausoleum of dead forms” but with the belief that his “imaginative energy […] profoundly transforms the genres themselves, creating new models which profoundly influenced English and American writers for three centuries” (Lewalski 1999: 115). Richard Terry, in a similar way, speaks of the ability of the long poem “to embrace and harmonize contradictions” (Terry 1992: 496). Critics from the eighteenth century to the present day have censured the formal and methodical heterogeneity of The Seasons. Samuel Johnson, for instance, observed that the great defect of The Seasons is want of method; but for this I know not that there was any remedy. Of many appearances subsisting all at once, no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another; yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiosity is not excited by suspense or expectation. (Johnson 1950: 2: 292) David Mallet, the author of the long poem The Excursion, is equally criticised for his “desultory and capricious view of such scenes of Nature as his fancy led him, or his knowledge enabled him, to describe” (Johnson 1950: 2: 366). Johnson remarks that Mallet’s The Excursion “has Thomson’s beauties and Thomson’s faults” (Johnson 1950: 2: 366). These faults are explained in Johnson’s “Life of Savage” when he contextualises The Wanderer against the background of a similar poetics of methodical irregularity: Generic Hybridity and Structural Technique in James Thomson’s Spring 57 It has been generally objected to The Wanderer, that the disposition of the parts is irregular; that the images, however beautiful, succeed each other without order; and that the whole performance is not so much a regular fabric, as a heap of shining materials thrown together by accident, which strikes rather with the solemn magnificence of a stupendous ruin, than the elegant grandeur of a finished pile. (Johnson 1950: 2: 92) Johnson, however, make a distinction between the (imaginative) long poems of Thomson, Mallet, and Savage and Pope’s “arbitrary and immethodical” technique of the didactic Essay on Criticism. He thereby - implicitly at least - acknowledges (and legitimises) what Edward Young termed “the bright walks of rare Imagination, and singular Design” as well as the “fresh untrodden ground” (Young 1966: 37) that Thomson explored in his long poem. Johnson defends Pope’s method by pointing out that Almost every poem consisting of precepts is so far arbitrary and immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, depending upon some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why one should precede the other. (Johnson 1950: 2: 151) He suggests that in a didactic production structure is less important since “by long circumduction from any one truth, all truth may be inferred” (Johnson 1950: 2: 151). It therefore follows that imaginative writing is in need of a structure that philosophical writings such as Shaftesbury’s do not possess. Johnson’s discussion of The Wanderer in particular focuses on the supposedly careless composition of the poem, the “irregular” “disposition of the parts” as well as the apparently accidental arrangement of “beautiful” “images” in the shape of a “heap of shining materials thrown together.” When writing about The Excursion, Johnson similarly remarked on the fact that many “of the images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant” (Johnson 1950: 2: 366). Still, however, Mallet’s production was suffering from the same “faults” as The Seasons. In fact, Thomson, Mallet and Savage were part of the so-called brotherhood of “sublime-obscure” and were exchanging ideas on the writing of a new kind of poem that culminated in the publication of Thomson’s Winter, The Excursion as well as The Wanderer (see Jung 2007b: chapter 2). Some of the remarks on original genius that Edward Young, Thomson’s early London acquaintance, makes in Conjectures on Original Composition can usefully be related to the structure of The Seasons, for Thomson had chosen a subject which enabled him to use the organic structure of the seasonal cycle. Digressions were deliberately introduced to add a contemplative aspect to the devotional character of The Seasons, which enabled the reader to pause and reflect, realising at the same time the tonal and modal changes of the composition. Young notes, in that regard, that poetic produc- Sandro Jung 58 tion, while “we bustle thro’ the thronged walks of public Life, […] gives us a respite, at least, from Care; a pleasing Pause of refreshing Recollection” (Young 1966: 6). He then introduces his plant metaphor to describe the structure of original composition: “An Original may be said to be of a vegetable nature; it rises spontaneously from the vital root of Genius; it grows, it is not made: Imitations are often a sort of Manufacture wrought up by those Mechanics, Art, and Labour, out of pre-existent materials not their own” (Young 1966: 10). Young compares an original with a flower, implying that the flower is founded on the linearity of the stem, a number of well-ordered leaves and then culminates in the complex petal constellation of the blossom. Even better than the (ornamental) metaphor of the flower is the image of a tree, since the branches rather than following the linearity of the trunk divide and diffuse, and once they are covered with leaves create the impression of a unified entity. Another simile that Young uses to explain the nature of originals is the likening of originals to rivers, for originals “resemble Rivers which, from a small fountain-head, are spreading ever wider, and wider, as they run” (Young 1966: 41). Thomson would have agreed with Young that “No-Genius [owes] its frequent Ruin” to “Rules” and “rigid Bounds” (Young 1966: 27). While Thomson appears to have partly freed himself from the generic requirements and expectations of classical epic and georgic, he is aware that the various episodes he introduces in his poem are themselves defined by generic or modal contexts. Thomson’s choice of blank verse for The Seasons, although blank verse is usually (as in the “Life of Dyer”) rejected by Johnson, is acknowledged and commended as unique: His blank verse is no more the blank verse of Milton, or of any other poet, than the rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley. His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are of his own growth, without transcription, without imitation. […] His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly used. Thomson’s wide expansion of general views, and his enumeration of circumstantial varieties, would have been obstructed and embarrassed by the frequent intersections of the sense, which are the necessary effects of rhyme. (Johnson 1950: 2: 291-92) According to Terry, the long poem is self-reflexive, “constantly involved in puzzling over its amphibian status as both a congeries of parts and a constructed integrity” (Terry 498). He is aware that the “most characteristic feature [of long poems] was their disparateness” but notes at the same time that “successful digression would actually reinforce the integrity of a work” (Terry 504). Although he mentions the “high-profile digressions” (Terry 504) of Paradise Lost he fails to provide a convincing argument concerning the way in which these digressions function as unifying elements of composition. To understand the digressiveness of The Seasons fully, it is necessary to consider the various digressions, discuss their generic as well as modal Generic Hybridity and Structural Technique in James Thomson’s Spring 59 3 The revisions of Winter have been examined by Stormer 1992: 27-40. See also, Jung 2007a. 4 Cohen further notes (94) that the “unity of the whole […] is chronologically progressive, and the recurrence of this progression is cyclical. Only when the poet refers to the immortal world does the movement become infinitely progressive.” implications and then relate them to the “design” of Thomson’s production. The season chosen for this analysis is Spring, which was first published in 1728 and then revised repeatedly for inclusion in The Seasons. 3 A number of critics have attempted to explain Thomson’s structural and generic strategies: Ralph Cohen, in that respect, introduces the idea of “associative unity” (Cohen 1960: 93) 4 in which the diverse variety of the individual elements - both generic and semantic - combine to reconstruct a sense of the original prelapsarian unity of human existence: “The ‘unifying vision’ is that God’s love and wisdom, only fragmentarily perceptible in the beautiful and dangerous aspects of man and nature, will become fully perceptible in a future world” (Cohen 3). Cohen further remarks that The Seasons possesses a “unifying vision” that “appears in the manner in which it joins eulogies, elegies, narratives, prospect views, historical catalogs, hymns, etc.” (Cohen 3). Thomson’s technique of association (ranging from abstractions to descriptions of concrete objects) is described towards the end of Spring: From the abstracted oft, You wander through the philosophic world; Where in bright train continual wonders rise Or to the curious or the pious eye. (922-925) These wonders are, of course, inspired by Thomson’s observation of the natural environment and the seasonal changes he has experienced. Zoë Kinsley remarks that in writing The Seasons Thomson looked for “organizing motifs by which to arrange his writing but […] found those structural devices within nature itself. Far from detaching the poet from his subject, these structures provided a form and language by which to express and enhance that relationship” (Kinsley 2005: 6). Although she traces a variety of “motifs” such as the sun to construct a sense of structure and order, this attempt is unconvincing in that it relies ultimately on a technique of association that eliminates any sense of disproportion and imbalance. Chalker, on the other hand, follows a more promising stance when he identifies a complementary dialectical relationship between the parts of the poem: Looking at the poem as a whole […] the four books might be labelled very crudely as ‘Optimism’, ‘Doubt’, ‘Optimism’, ‘Doubt’, each book playing off against the preceding one. And within the books one finds similar contrasts being made by the juxtaposition of the different kinds of material. (Chalker 133) Sandro Jung 60 5 The poem will be cited from Sambrook ed. 1981. All line references will be given parenthetically. While Chalker suggests that in “the perpetual cycle and recurring balance Thomson found reflected the ideal unity which sustained the universe” (Chalker 130), I propose that it is more likely that Thomson was utilising the conventions of the ode with its dialectical and antithetical structure of strophe, antistrophe and epode. In that respect, the speaker’s subjective discursive invocations of various entities and descriptions represent the lyrical and epic elements inherent in the hymnal ode. When Bill Hutchings invokes the ut pictura poesis tradition to argue that simultaneity can only be expressed in painting, and that “spatial simultaneity of objects in a landscape cannot be equated by words’ sequential order” (Hutchings 2000: 43), he fails to realise that Thomson introduces tableaux that have a variety of functions; above all, they are moral and instructive. Rather than being overwhelmed with an all-comprehending image, however, Thomson’s descriptive passages - through the use of sub-clauses, conjunctions, parentheses and shifts of tense - are gradual and progressive, thereby enabling the reader to grasp their true import rather than merely obtaining a fugitive impression. Earl Miner, discussing the literary-historical development from the “narrative” of the epic to an emphasis on “description” and “sense,” insists that in the eighteenth century “description must be ‘general,’ ‘large,’ in order that it will admit of discursive truth” (Miner 1969: 483). He concedes that there “can be no question that there is a frequent tendency to separation of description and discourse in the poetry of the century” (Miner 1969: 484-85). Ideally, he argues, description and discourse should enter a union. (Miner 1969: 485) He explains, however: “The probable reason for the separation of descriptive and discursive passages in many eighteenth-century poems is that the poets had confidence in both” (Miner 1969: 486). Miner’s assertion about the “displacement of narrative” (Miner 1966: 487) - in the light of my research on the ode and its modal correlation with the long poem - cannot be maintained as absolutely as he tries to do. He is right, however, in stressing that the discursive and the digressive could be (and were) used in conversational contexts in which the poet was writing for an audience and expecting some kind of response, thereby confirming the Johnsonian “faith in conversation or persuasion” (Miner 1969: 486). Of all approaches hitherto offered to understand the genre of The Seasons Miner’s approach seems to me the most helpful to appreciate the structure and generic hybridity of Spring. 5 I intend to complement his approach by examining the invocations, transitions and contrasts that Thomson uses in the poem. The most popular convention that writers of long poems adopt is to provide an “Argument” in which the contents of the book or canto of their work Generic Hybridity and Structural Technique in James Thomson’s Spring 61 6 Maren Sofie Rostvig (cited in Chalker 1969: 93) understands the long poem as a conflation of the Horatian ode (in the Miltonic tradition) and Virgilian epic. are given. The second edition of Spring (1729) contains a detailed table of contents in which Thomson titles the various passages, probably with the intention of providing a further structural aid to the reader; the list of contents also showed the progressive character of Spring from “a personage descending on Earth” to the conclusion of Spring “with the happiness of a pure mutual love, founded on friendship, conducted with honour, and confirmed by children.” Apart from this, Thomson in Spring uses the device of apostrophe repeatedly, mostly after long descriptive or contemplative passages, to create a sense of immediacy and dramatic action, as well as to evoke the impression of simultaneity of action, reflection and association, which is usually introduced by means of a digression. Thomson’s addresses of Spring, “ye virgins and ye youths,” Amanda, as well as the “Source of Being! Universal Soul,” are reminiscent of the hymnal address of classical Hesiodic and Homeric epic as well as of the hymnal odes of Thomson’s friend, William Collins. It may be argued that while the epic mode was translated and appropriated by the novel and the long poem in the eighteenth century, the long poem was characterised by features such as fragmentation that had been characteristic of the genre of the hymnal ode. 6 Thomson’s apostrophes are introduced on a number of occasions by the vocative imperative “come,” as at the beginning of Spring: Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come; And from the bosom of yon drooping cloud, While music wakes around, veiled in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend. This invocation is followed immediately by another, to Lady Hertford, who is a synechdochal representation of Spring: O Hartford, fitted or to shine in courts With unaffected grace, or walk the plain With innocence and meditation joined In soft assemblage, listen to my song, Which thy own season paints-when nature all Is blooming and benevolent, like thee. Although, as Lawrence Lipking has argued, the use of personification became stylised in the mid-century in that a demythologising process cleansed personifications from the hitherto exclusive mythological contexts of classical antiquity, Thomson conceptualises some of his apostrophes (especially those of Spring) as invocations of deities (see Lipking 1997: 72, 77 and Schlüter 1960: 23-41). In that respect, the description introduced at the Sandro Jung 62 beginning of Spring is paralleled in the description of Lady Hertford and her season. The Homeric hero-deity relationship is translated into a poet-patron relationship, which however retains the associations of the classical hymnal address of the Iliad. In Book 1 of Pope’s translation there are three hymnal addresses. At the beginning of the book, the wronged priest Chryses invokes Apollo to support him in regaining his daughter: O Smintheus! sprung from the fair Latona’s Line, Thou Guardian Pow’r of Cilla the Divine, Thou Source of Light! whom Tenedos adores, And whose bright Presence gilds thy Chrysa’s Shores. If e’er with Wreaths I hung thy sacred Fane, Or fed the Flames with Fat of Oxen slain; God of the Silver Bow! thy Shafts employ, Avenge thy Servant, and the Greeks destroy. (I, 53-60) (Alexander Pope 1967: 88) In Thomson’s poem, both Spring and Lady Hertford are addressed in ways that are reminiscent of the hymnal invocations of Collins. A descriptive passage (which can be encomiastic, mythological or explanatory, as in Homer) is provided in Thomson’s address of Lady Hertford, too, thereby adding what Schlüter calls a “pars epica” (Schlüter 1960: 40). The “to come” formula, which is an integral part of the hymn, is repeated in lines 480-493: Come then, ye virgins and ye youths, whose hearts Have felt the raptures of refining love; And thou, Amanda, come, pride of my song! Formed by the graces, loveliness itself! Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet, Those looks demure that deeply pierce the soul, Where, with the light of thoughtful reason mixed, Shines lively fancy and the feeling heart: Oh, come! and, while the rosy-footed May Steals blushing on, together let us tread The morning dews, and gather in their prime Fresh-blooming flowers to grace thy braided hair And thy loved bosom, that improves their sweets. The dramatic effect of invocations like these testifies to their oral, recitative and public origins. While Homer establishes a reciprocity and dialogue between man and the gods, Thomson attempts to emulate this interactive relationship by introducing discursive addresses. Further, the invocations enable Thomson to include himself in the company he assigns to those deities or pastoral characters that he invokes by using the formula “together let us.” This interactive involvement with the reader (who is also included in the “us,” of course) is varied by descriptive or contemplative passages, confirming the importance that Chalker assigned to the creation of mood: Generic Hybridity and Structural Technique in James Thomson’s Spring 63 “The Seasons is extremely varied, and it frequently happens that a major effect depends upon transpositions of mood which are reinforced by stylistic means” (Chalker 134). The “to come” formula occurs again in line 878 when Thomson’s speaker invokes those “generous minds, in whose wide thought, / Of all his works, Creative Bounty burns / With warmest beam.” Apart from that, there is a longer apostrophe of George Lyttleton, Thomson’s patron, equerry and later secretary to Frederick Prince of Wales: These are the sacred feelings of thy heart, Thy heart informed by reason’s purer ray, O Lyttleton, the friend! Thy passions thus And meditations vary, as at large, Courting the muse, through Hagley Park you stray- Thy British Tempè! There along the dale With woods o’erhung, and shagged with mossy rocks Whence on each hand the gushing waters play, And down the rough cascade white-dashing fall Or gleam in lengthened vista through the trees, You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts Thrown graceful round by Nature’s careless hand, And pensive listen to the various voice Of rural peace-the herds, the flocks, the birds. (901-15) This address is completed in line 960, and comprises 57 lines altogether. Thomson invokes his patron, again in terms that are reminiscent of the classical “to come” formula, which, according to Kurt Schlüter, was a prerequisite of the hymn, necessitating the deity to appear in order to grant a petition (Schlüter 1997: 243, see also Jung 2006: 30-45). By addressing Lyttleton with the interjective “O,” he creates a rapport with him which, however, with the apposition, “the friend” (as opposed to “my friend”), is made more universal in the sense that Lyttleton not only is a friend to Thomson but also a friend to the country and the people. Not only does Lyttleton “listen to the various voice / Of rural peace” but through his opposition to the Government, aims to secure a lasting peace for Britain. In that respect, Thomson’s invocation of Lyttleton is not merely a conventional address to a patron but a petition for Lyttleton to imitate the “rural peace” and establish it politically in the country. In doing so Thomson is extending what A.D. McKillop has termed the “physico-theological theme” (McKillop 1942: 11) of his poem. This hymnal reminiscence is used throughout The Seasons. In Summer, for instance, the poet invokes Inspiration in the same way in which he had invoked his deities in Spring: “Come, Inspiration! From thy hermit-seat, / By mortal seldom found” (15-16). These addresses represent Thomson’s attempt at creating immediacy and action, a testimony to his own function of Sandro Jung 64 poet as poet-priest, poeta doctus, georgic husbandman, descriptor of the beauties and the sublimity of nature, as well as an instructive bard and pastoral shepherd looking after his flock of characters within The Seasons but also without, that is, the readers of the poem (for the various roles that Thomson’s speaker assumes in Winter, see Jung 2002). At the same time, they are lyrical or, to use Earl Miner’s term, “discursive” statements that provide relief to the less personal enumerative, contemplative and, above all, digressive passages of description. Thomson realised that a poem entirely dedicated to description would not be able to convey poetry’s didactic function. The rapport that he needed to establish with the reader was achieved through his more dramatic and discursive passages. These passages, however, did not always achieve Miner’s ideal balance and harmony but were often distorted structurally by the transitions and connections that Thomson used to link discursive passages and description. The majority of transitions that Thomson uses to connect different passages are introduced by a contrastive “but.” Another possibility of opening a new section - though less frequent - is the conditional “if.” Rhetorical questions can be part of the discursive invocations, while “then” (222, 240 and more often) denotes the consequence or effect of a process, or “thus” (186, 443) a demonstrative pointer given as a result of a lengthy digression. Rhetorical questions, too, are repeatedly introduced by “but.” Yet, the contrastive function is not always fully realised since in an accumulation of contrasts the conjunction loses its rhetorical and stylistic effect. Furthermore, “then” is introduced as an adverbial marker for a retrospect digression on the prelapsarian existence of man and nature, the age of eternal Spring, which is then contrasted again with the loss of innocence and corruption of the present. “Then” is frequently embedded in a “then … now”-construction which can also be introduced by “but” (272). Other (not always effective) connectives include “hence” (309), “since” (317), “now … then” (964, 973), “but now” (331) as well as “yet” (336). “Yet” is expressive of the contrast Thomson intends to establish to the preceding passage, but it also denotes simultaneity. “Now” occurs in different functions in Spring. As in the poems of John Dyer and Collins it need not always be used in its temporal meaning. It can be used in the sense of an interjection, which elliptically anticipates a later use: “Now, when the first foul torrent of the brooks / Swelled with the vernal rains” denotes an incongruity between the present of the temporal “now” and the past tense “swelled.” It therefore ought to be understood as an interjective statement that abruptly introduces a new passage, at the same time anticipating the following sentence: “now is the time, / While yet the dark-brown water aids the guile, / To tempt the trout” (382-384). Generic Hybridity and Structural Technique in James Thomson’s Spring 65 Imperatives, which are, among others, used in the hymnal address, also introduce rhetorical questions: Behold yon breathing prospect bids the Muse Throw all her beauty forth. But who can paint Like Nature? Can imagination boast, Amid its gay creation, hues like this? (467-470) Apart from this, Thomson uses “now … now”-constructions to denote simultaneity. Contrasting discursive and descriptive passages, as Chalker noted many years ago in relation to the theme of The Seasons, is one of the poet’s central strategies. In a poem that is based primarily on juxtaposition and contrast, it is not easy to conceive how monotony or stylistic awkwardness could be avoided, as in a passage (714 and 729) where the same connective conjunctions are used (supposedly contrastively) for two consecutive passages. Rather than providing an effective contrast, levels of priority are blurred and description is not subordinated to Miner’s “sense.” The conjunctions that Thomson uses could effectively be employed in a shorter poem; the grammatical function of subordination is not always achieved when he opens new passages with temporal, conditional or causal clause structures. The poet’s dilemma, in that regard, consisted in his desire to approach the season from a multi-dimensional perspective which explored spring both spatially and temporally, as well as associatively. The lack of subordination of some parts to others is reflected in the imbalance between description and self-conscious address. Discourses exist next to each other but are not clearly related to each other. The hymnal elements, however, infuse the poem with a dynamism and dramatic effect which - despite the near-failure of connectives - establishes a unifying force that is also reflected in the sublimity commonly associated with the invocations in the odes of Collins. Mallet in The Excursion used a similar excessive repetition of identical transitions. Unlike Thomson, however, he has only one single hymnal invocation, at the opening of Book 1: Companion, of the muse, excursive power, I MAGINATION ! at whose great command Arise unnumber’d images of things, Thy hourly offspring: thou, who canst at will People with air-born shapes the silent wood, And solitary vale, thy own domain, Where Contemplation haunts; O come invok’d, To waft me on thy many-tinctur’d wing, O’er E ARTH ’s extended space. (1-9a) (Mallet 1728: 3) Mallet does not aim to establish the sequential dialogue of Homer, nor does he address a patron. Instead he overpopulates his landscape with (at times, Sandro Jung 66 mythological, but mostly rhetorical) personifications and indulges in his excursive view of the universe. Due to the lack of interactive engagement with reader, patron or deity and his focus on spatial exploration only, together with a strong fascination with the supernatural, The Excursion is even more structurally amorphous than The Seasons. Spring and The Seasons as a whole are held together by the interplay between the interactive aspect of apostrophe which echoes faintly Homer’s “Godlike Race of Heroes” (I, 345) communicating with the gods and imploring them for success in battle. Mallet, aware of the structural “fault” of his poem, admitted in the “Advertisement” that his objective “was only to describe some of the most remarkable Appearances of NATURE, [and that therefore] the Reader will not find in it that Unity, and Regularity of Design, which are essential in Epic and Dramatic Writings” (Mallet 1728: iii-iv). His focus clearly was on description and he therefore did not use the hymnal address in the ways that Thomson did. By its very nature, the hymnal tradition is focused on the invocation, the celebration of the apostrophised in encomiastic terms (which usually is part of the invocation and then elaborated in the “pars epica”) as well as the petition that the deity is asked to grant. The instructive aspect of poetry that Thomson mentioned in the “Preface” to Winter is represented by the georgic mode that he adopted from Virgil. Rather than writing a purely didactic poem in which there was no reason for a specific ordering of the ideas (as, according to Johnson, universal truth can be derived from the parts without being obscured by its structure), however, Thomson chose a number of generic elements that made the poem more varied but also more difficult to harmonise. Description, in that respect, is indirectly (judging by Johnson’s focus on instruction in his “Life of Pope”) understood as little instructive, but mainly entertaining the imagination instead. Furthermore, while Pope in the Essay on Criticism was conceived of as intent on articulating generalities, Thomson in The Seasons aims to single out specific scenes and characters to confirm his universal “hymn” of the creation, a hymn that is concluded by the appended “Hymn to the Seasons.” Lewalski’s argument about “imaginative energy” applied to rework the plurality of generic traditions is reflected in Thomson’s choice to combine different modal qualities and, thereby, to create a novel genre: the descriptive long poem. In this new kind of poem, none of the (lyric, epic and dramatic) modes exists independently of the others, but they are interrelated in a way that creates action and progression. The conflation of the dramatic and the lyric (as subjectified discourse in direct speech) is centrally acknowledged by Thomson’s use of hymnal elements, a fact that explains why scholarship has repeatedly comprehended him as an early Romantic. The interactive use of interjections, as well as temporal adverbs such as “Now” at the beginning of new paragraphs or semantic units focus attention and serve as transitions, which in the context of the Pindaric ode were expected to be abrupt as they Generic Hybridity and Structural Technique in James Thomson’s Spring 67 reflected sublime enthusiasm. Thomson’s descriptive digressions largely derive from the epic; the action that usually characterised classical epic is here introduced by means of lyric immediacy and invocations, as well as the drama of such interpolated episodes as “Celadon and Amelia” in Summer. The transformational and genre-synthesising qualities that characterise Thomson’s long poem make it possible to understand the poem and its generic contexts but also the discourses such as the sublime that the poet chooses. One problem of critics dealing with the long poem in the eighteenth century has been their desire to interpret The Seasons in the contexts of classical epic or Virgilian georgic while, at the same time, applying the Popean and Johnsonian category of ‘correctness’. Thomson, generically, is closer to Milton and Paradise Lost than he is to Pope. Apart from that, Thomson clearly takes inspiration from Milton’s companion pieces, “L’Allegro’ and “Il Penseroso,” two odes that adhere to the hymnal pattern. It is of central importance to recognise that the character of Thomson’s production not only is encomiastic but that it is hymnal, celebrating the divinity of the creation. As such, it is the product of an inspired poet who articulates a rhapsody in terms that eighteenth-century critics such as Thomson’s acquaintance John Dennis used to define the Pindaric ode. In his long poem Thomson succeeds in combining the two principal kinds of the hierarchy of genres, the epic and the ode. He is the first successful poet to use this ‘new’ genre of fragmentation and thereby paves the way for a more flexible and accepting appreciation of long poems which, in the Romantic period, will no longer use the hymnal tradition so central to The Seasons but will replace it with introspection, autobiography, and a more prominent sense of immediacy. References Chalker, John (1969). The English Georgic: A Study in the Development of a Form. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Cohen, Ralph (1960). The Unfolding of ‘The Seasons’. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fowler, Alastair (1982). Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hutchings, W.B. (2000). “ ‘Can Pure Description Hold the Place of Sense? ’: Thomson’s Landscape Poetry.” James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary. Ed. Richard Terry. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. 35-65. Johnson, Samuel (1950). Lives of the Poets. London: J.M. Dent. Jung, Sandro (2002). “The Descriptiveness of James Thomson’s Winter (1726) and the Early Eighteenth-Century ‘Winter’ Poem.” LiLi: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 125: 3. 158-169. Sandro Jung 68 Jung, Sandro (2006). “Form Versus Manner: The Pindaric Ode and the ‘Hymnal’ Tradition in the Mid-Eighteenth Century.” LiLi: Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 144: 3, 130-145. Jung, Sandro (2007a). “Updating Summer, or Revising and Recomposing The Seasons.” And Now for the Sequel: Examining Updates in Eighteenth-Century Works. Ed. Elizabeth Kraft and Debra Taylor Bourdeau. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 66-82 Jung, Sandro (2007b). David Mallet, Anglo-Scot: Poetry, Patronage and Politics in the Age of Union. Newark: University of Delaware Press. In print. Kinsley, Zoë (2005). “Landscape’s ‘dynamically in Motion’: Revisiting Issues of Structure and Agency in Thomson’s The Seasons.” Papers on Language and Literature 41: 1. 3-25 Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer (1999). “The Genres of Paradise Lost.” The Cambridge Companion to Milton. Ed. Dennis Danielson. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 79-95. Lipking, Lawrence (1997). “The Gods of Poetry: Mythology and the Eighteenth-Century Tradition.” Augustan Subjects: Essays in Honor of Martin C. Battestin. Ed. Albert J. Rivero. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 68-86. Mallet, David (1728). The Excursion. In Two Books. London: J. Walthoe, 1728. McKillop, Alan Dugald (1942). The Background of Thomson’s ‘Seasons’. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Miner, Earl (1969). “From Narrative to ‘Description’ and ‘Sense’ in Eighteenth-Century Poetry.” SEL 9: 3. 471-487. Pope, Alexander (1967). The Iliad of Homer, Books I-IX. Ed. Maynard Mack, The Twickenham Edition of the Works of Alexander Pope. London: Methuen and New Haven: Yale University Press. Sambrook, James ed. (1981). James Thomson: The Seasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schlüter, Kurt (1960). Die englische Ode: Studien zu ihrer Entwicklung unter Einfluß der antiken Hymne. Bonn: Bouvier. Schlüter, Kurt (1997). “Shelley’s ‘To Night’ and the Prayer Hymn of Classical Antiquity.” Studies in Romanticism 36: 2. 239-260. Sportelli, Annamaria (1999). Il “Long Poem” nell’eta di Wordsworth: Percorsi critici e testuali. Bari: Edizione B.A. Graphis. Steinman, Lisa M. (1998). Masters of Repetition: Poetry, Culture, and Work in Thomson, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Emerson. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Stormer, Philip Ronald (1992). “Holding ‘High Converse with the Mighty Dead’: Morality and Politics in James Thomson’s Winter.” ELN 29: 3. 27-40. Terry, Richard (1992). “Transitions and Digressions in the Eighteenth-Century Long Poem.” SEL 32: 3. 495-510. Young, Edward (1966). Conjectures on Original Composition. Leeds: The Scolar Press. Sandro Jung School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History Salford University