SOURCE: "Literary Criticism and Artistic Interpretation: Eighteenth-Century English Illustrations of The Seasons" in Reason and Imagination: Studies in the History of Ideas 1600-1800, edited by J. A. Mazzeo, Columbia University Press, 1962, pp. 279-306.

In the following essay, Cohen uses illustrations for different editions of The Seasons as the basis for an argument about changing standards for interpretion. In the process, he suggests that Thomson's poem was broad enough to encompass the range of meanings captured by the illustrators.

Art historians have made clear that paintings not only can be, but need to be interpreted to be understood. Such works are assumed to be nonverbal communications, and they belong to a significant realm of human behaviour. Psychologists have pointed out that 'art both codifies and interprets…. Symbolic representation in art is more than merely a code; it also contains a comment, an interpretation, and a suggestion of how to...