'Devolving through the Maze of Eloquence': James Thomson's The Seasons and the Eighteenth-Century Verse Labyrinth

This article combines readings of The Seasons' many mazes and amazements with a survey of labyrinths in contemporary British landscape design and literature. In doing so it reassesses recent accounts of the poem's ideological perspectives and demonstrates the wider importance of maze allusions in early eighteenth‐century literature. Figuring the Creation as a maze allowed authors of this period to represent nature's intricate concordia discors while harnessing the prestige of canonical poetry. In The Seasons, James Thomson uses similar strategies to establish the primacy of poetry over nature and so facilitate interventions into controversial topics such as theodicy and party politics.