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:  Eulogy:
 A speech or writing
 A poem lamenting extolling the virtues and
the death of a friend services of a person-
especially referring t a
or a famous person funeral oration

 Note: Gray’s “Elegy” does

 Compare Tennyson’s not refer to a particular
“In Memoriam” or death, but rather reflection
of the lives of people
Whitman’s “When buried in the churchyard
Lilacs Last in the and, by extension, of
humankind in general.
Dooryard Bloom”
 Poetic diction/classical and
topical allusions in “Elegy”
Line 2: lea pasture

Line 11: Bower dwelling

Line 18: horn horn of the hunter

Line 33: The boast of Heraldry is the study

Heraldry of family cots of arms;
thus the phrase refers
to the pride of having
 “Elegy”
Lines 33-36: The subject is “hour”;
the verb is “wait”;
lines 33 and 34 are the
direct object of wait
Line 39: fretted vault The ornamental
arched ceiling of a
church roof
Line 41: Storied urn An urn inscribed with
the story of the
deceased
Line 41: animated Life-like
 “Elegy”
Line 43: Provoke Arouse or call forth

Line 52: genial Warm or living

John Hampden ( 1594-1643), a

Line 57: Hampden 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 The spirit of folk art

Muse
 “Elegy”
Line 84: moralist Moral man

Line 92: wonted customary

Line 93: For thee Probably Gray himself;

perhaps the
stonecutter poet of
this graveyard
Line 97: Haply perhaps
 “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