Overview

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.

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9781469654652

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Reviews

A Time to Every Purpose is a fascinating look at American responses to nature and its seasons through changing intellectual and cultural moments. Michael Kammen 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 tropes that represent it. (Joy Kasson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Kammen explores the artistic motif of the four seasons, paying particular attention to distinctly American manifestations. He offers an intellectual history of this idiom and investigates its expression in the fine arts, writing, & material culture as seen in work from Henry David Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Rachel Carson, Norman Rockwell, Marc Chagall, even in seed catalogs and the art of school children. This interesting multidisciplinary study casts a wide net over the use of seasonal motifs in American culture. . . . Provocative and useful. -- Journal of American Studies

Kammen explores the artistic motif of the four seasons, paying particular attention to distinctly American manifestations. He offers an intellectual history of this idiom and investigates its expression in the fine arts, writing, & material culture as seen in work from Henry David Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Rachel Carson, Norman Rockwell, Marc Chagall, even in seed catalogs and the art of school children. A Time to Every Purpose is a fascinating look at American responses to nature and its seasons through changing intellectual and cultural moments. Michael Kammen 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 tropes that represent it. (Joy Kasson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) This interesting multidisciplinary study casts a wide net over the use of seasonal motifs in American culture. . . . Provocative and useful. -- Journal of American Studies

Author Information

Michael Kammen (1936-2013) was the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University. He was author or editor of more than twenty books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization and Robert Gwathmey: The Life and Art of a Passionate Observer.

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