Thomas Gray
Name – Janvi Nakum
Paper – Literature of the Neo-classical Period
Roll no- 11
Enrollment no –4069206420210020
Email id – janvinakum360@gmail.com
Batch-2021-2023 (M.A. Sem – 1 )
Submitted to – S.B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
Thomas Gray Life and Work
Introduction Poet
Thomas Gray 26 December 1716 was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.
Gray was a self- critical written who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite being very popular. He was even offered the position of Poet Laureate in 1757, though he declined. His writing is conventionally considered to be pre-Romantic but recent critical developments deny such teleological classification.
Writing and academia
Gray began seriously writing poems in 1742, mainly after the death of his close friend Richard West, which inspired “sonnet on the Death of Richard West”. He moved to Cambridge and began a self- directed programme of literary study, becoming one of the most learned men of his time. He became a Fellow first of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. According to Britannica, Gray moved to Peterhouse played a prank on him.
Gray spent most of his life as a scholar in Cambridge, and only later in his life did he begin travelling again. Although he was one of the least productive poets , he is regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the post of Poet Laureate, which he refused. Gray was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime. He once wrote that he feared his collected works would be "mistaken for the works of a flea." Walpole said that "He never wrote anything easily but things of Humour." Gray came to be known as one of the "Graveyard poets" of the late 18th century, along with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper, and Christopher Smart. Gray perhaps knew these men, sharing ideas about death, mortality, and the finality and sublimity of death.
In 1762, the Regius chair of Modern History at Cambridge, a sinecure which carried a salary of £400, fell vacant after the death of Shallet Turner, and Gray's friends lobbied the government unsuccessfully to secure the position for him. In the event, Gray lost out to Lawrence Brockett, but he secured the position in 1768 after Brockett's death.
Works
• Thomas Gray Poems
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
• Hymn to Adversity
• Ode On A Distant Prospect Of Eton College
• Ode on the death of a favorite cat
• Ode On The Pleasure Arising From Vicissitude
• Ode On The Spring
• On the Death of Richard West
• The Bard
• The Curse Upon Edward
• The Fatal Sisters: An Ode
• The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric ode
-An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard
An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard, meditative poem written in iambic pentameter quatrains by Thomas Gray, published in 1751.
A meditation on unused human potential, the conditions of country life, and mortality, An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard is one of the best-known elegies in the language. It exhibits the gentle melancholy that is characteristic of the English poets of the graveyard school of the 1740s and ’50s. The poem contains some of the best-known lines of English literature, notably “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen” and “Far from the madding Crowd’s ignoble Strife.”
The elegy opens with the narrator musing in a graveyard at close of day; he speculates about the obscure lives of the villagers who lie buried and suggests that they may have been full of rich promise that was ultimately stunted by poverty or ignorance. The churchyard in the poem is believed to be that of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, which Gray visited often and where he now lies buried.
Summary
Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” presents the omniscient speaker who talks to the reader. First, he stands alone in a graveyard deep in thought. While there, he thinks about the dead people buried there. The graveyard referred to here is the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. The speaker contemplates the end of human life throughout the poem. He remarks on the inevitability of death that every individual has to face.
Besides mourning the loss of someone, the speaker in the elegy reminds the reader that all people will die one day. Death is an unavoidable and natural thing in everyone’s life. When one dies today, tomorrow, a stranger will see the person’s tombstone. Out of curiosity, he will ask about the person buried there to a villager. The villager will reply that he knew the man. He would add that he had seen him in various spots. Sometimes, he will also remark that he had stopped seeing the man one day, and then there was the tombstone.
In the poem, Gray, the poet himself, writes the epitaph of his own. He says that his life is full of sadness and depression. However, he feels proud of his knowledge. He calls it incomparable. In addition to this, he says that ‘No one is perfect in this world.’ So, he asks the reader not to judge anyone in the graveyard. Each and every soul is different and takes rest for eternity in the graveyard. In conclusion, the poet, through the speaker, ends the elegy by saying that death is an inevitable event in this world. Also, he says that man’s efforts and his struggles to succeed in life comes to an end in death. Thus, death conquers man regardless of his successes and/or failures in his endeavors during his life.
Themes
The poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, speaks of ordinary people. It is an elegy for poor villagers. They are not famous but they are honest. So, the poet has written this poem in honoring them. The poem talks about death as an equalizer. Rich or poor should end in death. Moreover, no man can escape death. In death, all are equal. Besides, nothing including any amount of rich or glory can bring the dead to life. Even poor people deserve respect for their death. Given opportunities, they would have become great men in their times.
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College poem
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" is an 18th-century ode by Thomas Gray. It is composed of ten 10-line stanzas, rhyming ABABCCDEED, with the B lines and final D line in iambic trimeter and the others in iambic tetrameter. In this poem, Gray coined the phrase "Ignorance is bliss".
Two themes play through Gray’s “ Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”. The major theme is the inevitability of suffering, death, and unhappiness for humankind. Sad though the theme is, Gray tempers it with his own father like concern in keeping this knowledge from the children.
About Poem
The poem splits into two even parts, with the first fifty lines concentrating on the past and the present, with the boys at school devoting all their energies to play and study and paying little heed to the future, and the second half dealing with that future and the pain and suffering that it is likely to bring.
The poem begins with a look at the distant past, using suitable archaic language to do so: “Ye distant spires, ye antique towers” and with a reference to the school’s founder in “Henry’s holy shade” (King Henry VI was thought by some to be qualified for sainthood). There is a good deal of fanciful and overblown language here, not untypical of 18th century poets; it might be noted, for example, that Eton College has no spires and only one tower!
The poem ends with another couplet that has entered the common stock of English quotations, although most people who use it have no idea from whence it came: “where ignorance is bliss, ‘Tis folly to be wise”. This is often misinterpreted as stating that it is a good thing to be uneducated, but that is not what Gray means by “ignorance”. Instead, he is summarizing everything that has gone before in this poem to say that misfortunes will come in their own good time and it would be cruel to inflict them on young people before they are ready to bear them.
There is a lot of artificiality in this poem, both in the diction and the sentiments expressed. There are, however, both echoes of Milton and foretastes of Blake, both of whom dealt with the innocence/experience theme more convincingly than Gray. As mentioned earlier, Gray is a transitional figure in the history of English poetry, and “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” is a poem that illustrates that transition as neatly as any.
Conclusions
Gray died on 30 July 1771in Cambridge, and was buried beside his mother in the churchyard of St Giles’ church in Stoke Poges, the reputed setting for his famous Elegy. His grave can still be seen there.
Reference
Thomas Gray life and Work Wikipedia
Elegypoem:https://poemanalysis.com/thomasgray/elegy,written,country,churchyard,and analysis
Word: 1514
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