A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE. The Four Seasons In American Culture.

Kammen, Michael.

ISBN 10: 080782836X / ISBN 13: 9780807828366

Published by University of North Carolina Press:, 2004

About this Item

336 pages, illustrated in b&w and 48 full page color plates. "This book is a fascinating look at American responses to nature and its seasons through changing intellectual and cultural moments. The author reaches deeply and imaginatively into art, literature, and popular culture to produce a multidimensional study that highlights change and continuity in Americans; relationship to the natural world and the troupes that represent it." FINE HARDCOVER, FINE DUST JACKET, signed by the author. Size: 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. Seller Inventory # 019835

Bibliographic Details

Title: A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE. The Four Seasons ...

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press:

Publication Date: 2004

Binding: Hard Cover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: Fine

Signed: Signed by Author

Edition: First printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

In artworks from a mosaic by Marc Chagall to schoolchildren's paintings, in writings from Susan Fenimore Cooper to Annie Dillard, and in diverse print sources from family genealogical registers to seed catalogs, the four seasons appear and reappear as a theme in American culture.

In this richly illustrated book, Michael Kammen traces the appeal of the four seasons motif in American popular culture and fine arts from the seventeenth century to the present. Its symbolism has evolved through the years, Kammen explains, serving as a metaphor for the human life cycle or religious faith, expressing nostalgia for rural life, and sometimes praising seasonal beauty in the diverse American landscape as the most spectacular in the world. Kammen also highlights artists' and writers' shift in attention from the glories of seasonal peaks to the dynamics of seasonal transitions as American life continued to accelerate and change through the twentieth century.

Few symbols have been as pervasive, meaningful, and symptomatic in the human experience as the four seasons, and as Kammen shows, in its American context the annual cycle has been an abundant and abiding source of inspiration in the nation's cultural history.

Book Description:

"This interesting multidisciplinary study casts a wide net over the use of seasonal motifs in American culture. . . . Provocative and useful."-- Journal of American Studies