Poetical Siblings: Thomson's Vignette of Celadon and Amelia Transformed

Abstract

abstract:Focusing on the transformative textual afterlife of James Thomson's tragic-sentimental vignette of Celadon and Amelia, this article charts later poets' engagement with the lovers by examining incarnations of poetical siblings of Thomson's "matchless pair" that were introduced in later eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century descriptive-philosophical long poems: not only will the article offer a discussion of how Thomson's model of two tragic lovers was adapted and transvalued by poets, such as Samuel Pratt, John Penwarne, and Martin Kedgwin Masters. But it will also consider how the vignette, as Thomson devised it for The Seasons, transformed into a fundamentally dramatic-narrative device that redefined the otherwise reflective-descriptive genre of the long poem.