Preromanticism: Romantic & Neoclassical Elements

Thomas Gray – Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

- two dates – 1 (when it was written) 2 (when it was published, in this case – 1715)

- elegy implies a feeling of sadness that something is over, refers to either an important theme or
personality

- in this elegy, the dedicatee is not specified, but the title makes a reference to the place of
composition, the place where the writer finds himself (strange for an elegy, as they don’t usually
foreground the author)

- it also refers to deceased that are poor common folk (“country churchyard”), not nobles (who
were buried in the church)

- impeccable consistency of the metre; specifically, a iambic pentameter quatrains with crossed
rhyme (ABAB) => THE HEROIC QUATRAIN

- therefore it is, in its entirety, neoclassical in shape and theme (elegy), but not truly neoclassical
because it has simple people as its dedicatee and makes a reference to the poet who at the end
becomes the dedicatee himself

- the beginning gives the setting of the evening, with a large perspective

- “the ploughman” – use of definite article to create a generic picture

- The two entities “darkness” and “me”; the “me” refers to the Lyrical “I” that appears again only
at the end

- Features descriptions that get closer to the graveyard; description of tombs; description of the
people’s lives through negatives (“For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn”); description
of an idyllic life

- Abstractions (“Let not Ambition mock their useful toil” “Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful
smile” “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power”) presented as personifications ->
ALLEGORIES (typical tropes of classicism)

- this elegy combines the new, melancholy mood and the interest for simple people with old
tropes

- the end of poem presents an epitaph discovered by the speaker and somebody from the village:

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,

He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose)

The bosom of his Father and his God.

- It is an epitaph for THE NEW KIND OF POET

- Refers to a gifted, compassionate, talented young man who conforms to the accepted religion

- A portrait of the preromantic poet as seen by the generation at the time (not a self-portrait but
an idealised one)