Poetry and Painting: A Jungian Study of the “Sister Arts” in James Thomson’s The Seasons

Document Type : Original Article

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Department of English Literature and Language, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University / Faculty of Languages, MSA University

Abstract

Eighteenth century England witnessed a revival of the vogue for allegorical painting and pictorial poetry inspired by the sister arts theory. The creative literary pictorialism in James Thomson's masterpiece The Seasons (1726-30) is accompanied by the landscape paintings by Salvatore Rosa and Claude Lorraine which enchanted eighteenth century poetry. Using Jungian psychology of creativity and theory of Aesthetics, this paper attempts to study the mental and emotional process of creativity undertaken by both the poet and the painter that make the creation and appreciation of one art complemented by the other. According to Carl Jung, the creative process takes place due to the unconscious activation of the archetypal images. By elaborating and giving shapes to these images, the artists translate them into the language of art, be it poetry or paintings, hence the finished artwork. The study will examine how both poets and artists integrate the unconscious and the conscious minds into one great unity through the process of individuation; an integration that inform and shape the process of aesthetic appreciation and leads to the achievement of self-actualization.

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