James Thomson's The Seasons, Print Culture, and Visual Interpretation, 1730–1842
Seiten
2021
Lehigh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-61146-319-4 (ISBN)
Lehigh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-61146-319-4 (ISBN)
This book investigates the cultural afterlife of James Thomson’s The Seasons (1730) by charting the prominent place it occupied in the visual cultures of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain.
Drawing on the methods of textual and reception studies, book history, print culture research, and visual culture, this interdisciplinary study of James Thomson’s The Seasons (1730) understands the text as marketable commodity and symbolic capital which throughout its extended affective presence in the marketplace for printed literary editions shaped reading habits. At the same time, through the addition of paratexts such as memoirs of Thomson, notes, and illustrations, it was recast by changing readerships, consumer fashions, and ideologies of culture. The book investigates the poem’s cultural afterlife by charting the prominent place it occupied in the visual cultures of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. While the emphasis of the chapters is on printed visual culture in the form of book illustrations, the book also features discussions of paintings and other visual media such as furniture prints. Reading illustrations of iconographic moments from The Seasons as paratextual, interpretive commentaries that reflect multifarious reading practices as well as mentalities, the chapters contextualise the editions in light of their production and interpretive inscription. They introduce these editions’ publishers and designers who conceived visual translations of the text, as well as the engravers who rendered these designs in the form of the engraving plate from which the illustration could then be printed. Where relevant, the chapters introduce non-British illustrated editions to demonstrate in which ways foreign booksellers were conscious of British editions of The Seasons and negotiated their illustrative models in the sets of engraved plates they commissioned for their volumes.
Drawing on the methods of textual and reception studies, book history, print culture research, and visual culture, this interdisciplinary study of James Thomson’s The Seasons (1730) understands the text as marketable commodity and symbolic capital which throughout its extended affective presence in the marketplace for printed literary editions shaped reading habits. At the same time, through the addition of paratexts such as memoirs of Thomson, notes, and illustrations, it was recast by changing readerships, consumer fashions, and ideologies of culture. The book investigates the poem’s cultural afterlife by charting the prominent place it occupied in the visual cultures of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. While the emphasis of the chapters is on printed visual culture in the form of book illustrations, the book also features discussions of paintings and other visual media such as furniture prints. Reading illustrations of iconographic moments from The Seasons as paratextual, interpretive commentaries that reflect multifarious reading practices as well as mentalities, the chapters contextualise the editions in light of their production and interpretive inscription. They introduce these editions’ publishers and designers who conceived visual translations of the text, as well as the engravers who rendered these designs in the form of the engraving plate from which the illustration could then be printed. Where relevant, the chapters introduce non-British illustrated editions to demonstrate in which ways foreign booksellers were conscious of British editions of The Seasons and negotiated their illustrative models in the sets of engraved plates they commissioned for their volumes.
Sandro Jung is distinguished professor of English and comparative literature at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Reading the Visual Paratext
Editions of The Seasons: 1730–1798
Paintings and Prints
Subscription Ventures, Pocket Diaries, and Up-Market Prints
Editions of The Seasons: 1802–1842
Epilogue
Erscheinungsdatum | 17.05.2021 |
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Reihe/Serie | Studies in Text & Print Culture |
Verlagsort | Cranbury |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 153 x 230 mm |
Gewicht | 499 g |
Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Design / Innenarchitektur / Mode |
Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Malerei / Plastik | |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik | |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte | |
Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
ISBN-10 | 1-61146-319-X / 161146319X |
ISBN-13 | 978-1-61146-319-4 / 9781611463194 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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