Thomas Gray:
Transitional Poet
Mrs. Cumberland
Objectives
 To become acquainted with the work
of Thomas Gray
 To examine the elegy
 To study an example of the literary
transition from Neoclassical to
Romantic literature
Thomas Gray
 Born in London on December 26,1716
 His father was a violent-tempered man who
worked as a scrivener ( public copyist or
writer, such as a notary)
 His mother supplemented income by
keeping a shop
 Allowed Gray to go to Eton and Cambridge
 He studied classical literature
 Gray traveled for three
yrs. after graduating.
 Never married
 Professor of modern
history and languages
at Cambridge.
 Spent time as a poet and
scholar
 Explored British museum
( opened 1759)
 Died in Cambridge in
1771 after a long illness
Gray as a Poet
 Represents a transition from the
Neoclassical couplet of Pope to the
more expansive verse forms of the
Romantic poets
Gray as a Poet ( continued)
 Four-line stanza form with abab rhyme
scheme and iambic pentameter
became known as the “elegiac
stanza”in honor of his “Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard”
Gray as a Poet ( continued)
 Alternating rhyme of this verse differs
from the classical couplet form, but
preserves the emphasis on following a
pattern
 Diction has much of the precision and
polish of the Neoclassical school.
 Shows Romantic tendencies in the
spirit and themes of his poetry more
than in his form.
 His depiction of nature and the
common life anticipates later Romantic
poets like Wordsworth
 Gray’s focus on the life of the common
people and the effect of nature upon one’s
mood are characteristic of the Romantic
poet.
Elegy…in a …Churchyard
 Most famous of his poems
 Spent six years composing the poem
 Reveals personality in emotional
expressions on nature and death.
Elegy..in a…Churchyard
 Reflects Pope’s epigram, “What oft was
thought, but ne’er so well expressed”
Definitions
 Elegy:
 A poem lamenting
the death of a friend
or a famous person
 Compare Tennyson’s
“In Memoriam” or
Whitman’s “When
Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Bloom”
 Eulogy:
 A speech or writing
extolling the virtues and
services of a personespecially referring t a
funeral oration
 Note: Gray’s “Elegy”
does not refer to a
particular death, but
rather reflection of the
lives of people buried in
the churchyard and, by
extension, of humankind
in general.
Poetic diction/classical and
topical allusions in “Elegy”
Line 2: lea
pasture
Line 11: Bower
dwelling
Line 18: horn
Line 33: The boast of
Heraldry
horn of the hunter
Heraldry is the study
of family cots of arms;
thus the phrase refers
to the pride of having
“Elegy”
Lines 33-36:
Line 39: fretted vault
Line 41: Storied urn
Line 41: animated
The subject is “hour”;
the verb is “wait”;
lines 33 and 34 are the
direct object of wait
The ornamental
arched ceiling of a
church roof
An urn inscribed with
the story of the
deceased
Life-like
“Elegy”
Line 43: Provoke
Arouse or call forth
Line 52: genial
Warm or living
Line 57: Hampden
John Hampden ( 1594-1643), a
British landowner who resisted the
tax assessment to maintain the
fleet of Charles I, thus becoming
the hero of England’s Civil War, in
1642.
Lines 61-64
Direct objects of the
word forbade in line
65
“Elegy”
Line 73: madding
Wild, furious
Line 76: tenor
Even course
Line 79: uncouth
strange
Line 81: unlettered
Muse
The spirit of folk art
“Elegy”
Line 84: moralist
Moral man
Line 92: wonted
customary
Line 93: For thee
Probably Gray himself;
perhaps the
stonecutter poet of
this graveyard
perhaps
Line 97: Haply
“Elegy”
Line 97: swain
Rustic, country youth
Line 116: thorn
Hawthorne tree
Line 119: science
knowledge
Line 121: bounty
bounteousness
 READ “Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard”
 Answer discussion questions
Reflect
 The poem is Neoclassical in style
 Regular iambic pentameter lines
 “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day…”
 Poetic in diction
 “storied urn”
 “the dull cold ear of Death”
 The poem is Romantic in tone
 Scenes of nature
 Exaltation of humble country folk and gentle
melancholy tone
Additional Activities
 Read “Elegy” and Edward Young’s “Night
Thoughts” or Robert Blair’s “The Grave” and
compare their views on death with Gray’s
 One of Gray’s
contemporaries is
William Collins.
Read Collins’s “ode
to Evening” and
compare its
Neoclassical and
Romantic elements
with those of Gray’s
“Elegy”
 Two modern elegies are
“Elegy for Jane” by
Theodore Roethke (
1908-1963) and “Elegy
for William Hubbard”
by Tony Connor ( 1930-)
Compare the subject
matter of these two
elegies with Gray’s
poem