James Thomson  Neoclassical

Info

- Scottish poet and playwright (dramatic writer/dramatist)

- set apart from Robert Burns

Works

Winter

- brought notice he sought

- speaks especially to the Christian, who sees his Creator's work in the tempest as well as in the calm orderliness of the physical world

Summer; Spring; Autumn

The Seasons

- pointed new directions for English poetry

- signaled demand for poems of natural description and sentimental reflection

- readers ready for alternative to heroic couplet

- forerunners of 19th-century romantic practice

- neoclassical didacticism - tends to move from description to moralization

Terms

- heroic couplet

- blank verse - unrhymed iambic pentameter

- epic - long, stylized narrative poem celebrating deeds of a national or ethnic hero

- poetic diction

- personification - giving human characteristics to nonhuman objects

- apostrophe - addressing an inanimate/absent object as if it were able to reply

- periphrases - roundabout, more elegant designation of something common

- didacticism - instruction in literature

Citation

Horton, Ronald A. British Literature for Christian Schools. Greenville, SC: Bob Jones University Press, 1992.