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A Hypertextual Analysis - © S.A.Pettignano, 1999

Background

The author -

In spite of his deep classical culture, his wide knowledge of both Celtic and Icelandic poetry, meant as expressions of primitive cultures, together with his interest in country life, humble people and meditation made of him, as to the content of his works, one of the many forerunners of the future Romantic movement. Concerning his versification, on the contrary, he was a classicist, convinced as he was that poetical language should be very cultivated, respectful of the classical canons and as distant as possible from the common spoken one. Owing to this permanence of old elements in form side by side with the introduction of new ones in content, Gray is commonly considered as a transitional poet between two great literary movements such as Enlightenment and Romanticism.

The text - Even if this poem belongs chronologically to the Augustan Age, its focus on deep feelings and on a new approach to nature together with a widespread sense of melancholy and a highly meditative mood may easily show the twilight of classicism in poetry that gave way to a transition stage in which both old and new elements can be found side by side. The difficult task of detaching himself from the themes exploited by Pope’s poetic diction, which had already become the only canon of making poetry, together with his convinced rejection of using the common spoken language in poetry, is clearly shown by the long writing time – more than seven years – that this elegy took the writer who had been searching a different poetry both in content and, on a lexical plane, in versification. His reaction, however, more than in form, based on the precise pattern of 4-line and alternate-rhyme stanzas of iambic pentameters taken by Dryden and generally modelled on the twenty-fourth ode of Horace’s First Book of Odes, is to be found above all in its setting and themes as well, deeply interwoven one another. The space of the poem is a country churchyard, where the cemetery is the perfect background for the general theme of death pervading the whole composition and the country is both used for the appreciation of nature – seen as a reality made up of earth, trees, animals but of the human work and fatigue too - and for the social focusing on what, by the Romantics to come, would have been called humble rustic life; the time is the twilight, that particular moment of the day later defined as the breaking between the opposed worlds of day and night, when the daylight is slowly fading away while the shadows of darkness are growing up to give way to the dark side of life where a conscious melancholy replaces a mindless joy and a deep meditation takes the place of a careless action. As to themes, death is undoubtedly the most evident one, present as it is from the very title of the poem to the closing Epitaph, and, in the poet’s intention, it is seen both as an event showing the transience of matter, thus giving the chance to meditate on the very meaning of life, and a sort of gigantic levelling power that annihilates the distance among men belonging to different social classes. Nature is the other great theme of the poem and, just like death, She also is observed from two different points of view: at a surface observation the natural imagery, in its quiet and melancholic aspect, in the gentle and peaceful vision, may easily recall to the reader’s mind the taste – typical of the time e.g. in Pope’s Pastorals or Windsor Forest as well – for those Latin pastorals written by poets such as Teocritus or Virgil, but, on a closer sight, the natural element is not a distant and idealized background anymore but a living thing which men have to interact with, often in terms of hardship and physical labour. In the Elegy, the human beings, seen as working men who become forefathers thanks to their sweat and fatigue, are astride Life, repre- sented by their relationship with Nature, and Death, represented by the humble country churchyard with all its fragile witness of past lives.

According to its content, the Elegy may be divided into three different parts or moments: 1. the vision of a small country churchyard, with the poor tombs of humble people in a striking contrast between the boasting exequies of the rich, gives the poet the chance to meditate on death, the transience of life and to recall the reader’s attention to the social differences in life that, however, are completely dissolved and annihilated by the levelling power of death (stanzas 1-11); 2. through the contrastive comparison between the humble lot of poor people and the great men’s fortune – emphasized by the presence of Capital Sins such as Ambition, Flattery, Luxury, Pride, etc. – the poet considers how the same lot that forbade humble people to carry out big enterprises prevented them, in the meantime, from committing crimes and links this second part to the first one (stanzas 12-21); 3. the poet’s attention is shifted on himself, thus giving the Elegy a more intimate and personal tone, when he considers his supposed death and subsequent burial in the same churchyard (stanzas 22-29). The Epitaph, the final part of the poem (stanzas 30-32), might easily stand alone as a perfect sum of the author’s life and opinions, as a moral legacy for the world.

Poetry surely was the literary genre which, introducing new trends in contrast to classicism, best mirrored the conflict between intellect and emotions, reason and feelings, busted out by the second half of the 18th century and culminated in the twilight of Classicism. Since the 1720's, a strong sense of dissatisfaction with the society born from the Industrial Revolution together with the increasing absence of religious values, in favour of the absolute faith in reason, had led some poets to feel a painful sense of failure and frustration which soon made them felt as dropouts: unable to accept the dominant attitude which considered man as a social being only driven by material needs, disregarding both his soul and feelings, they turned to a more intimate poetry of the spirit but what troubled them most in this rejection, more than content which had naturally sprung up from their personal needs, was the absolute lack of a language able to express their feelings and emotions, their pains and disillusions so that they soon found themselves without any possible communication in a strangers’ land and escaped in nature and in the humble life of country people to find a shelter far from the madding crowd. The poets who first gave voice to this change, e.g. J. Thomson, with his long poem The Seasons (1726-1730), and W. Collins, especially in his Ode to Evening (1746), were called elegiac for their pensive mood and the links with Latin works such as Virgil’s Georgics.

Meditation on Nature and Man’s destiny was soon tinged with a sort of melancholy for the transience of life which slowly shifted these poets’ attention from the living world and drew them deeply away into the dark dimension of decay and death where the poetical form which best fitted their mood was still the elegy, meant as a lament for someone’s death, and the space was circumscribed by ruins and tombs thus giving life to what is commonly referred to as the Graveyard School of Poetry, an English phenomenon which paved the way for the Gothic literature and the darkest side of Romanticism. Among the poets who tried to explore the world of the dead, it is important to mention E. Young, who wrote, in blank verse, The Complaint; or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality (1742-1745), and R. Blair, author of The Grave (1743), a meditation on death imbued with a strong religious devotion, and, maybe, it is not perchance that they both were ministers of the Anglican Church.

It was, however, Thomas Gray the one who, with his Elegy, found the best balance in the features and themes of both the elegiac and the graveyard poets.

 

1. Both the opening stanza and the closing ones are immediately concerned with the poet himself. What does this device suggest you?
2. Stanzas from 1 to 4 make up both the time and the setting of the poem. Find the adjectives, nouns and verbs used by the poet and express their connotations.
3. Death is the leitmotiv of the whole composition. Find the words related with it and their connotations.
4. What is, according to the text, the function of the grave?
5. Find the animals and the trees in the text together with their possible connotations so as to move to the symbolic level.
6. The human beings in this poem are divided into two main social categories: rich and poor. How does the poets describe them?
7. Try and make an inner portrait of the poet as he himself is seen in the closing stanzas and, particularly, in the epitaph.
8. Work out the religious sense of the poem.

    

Extension

 

1. Make a comparison, both as to form and content, between Gray’s Elegy and the following ode by Alexander Pope:

   Ode on Solitude

   Happy the man, whose wish and care

   A few paternal acres bound,

   Content to breathe his native air

   In his own ground.

    

   Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

   Whose flocks supply him with attire;

   Whose trees in summer yield him shade.

   In winter fire.

    

   Blest, who can unconcernedly find

   Hours, days, and years, slide soft away

   In health of body peace of mind,

   Quiet by day.

    

   Sound sleep by night. study and ease

   Together mixed, sweet recreation,

   And innocence, which most does please

   With meditation.

    

   Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

   Thus unlamented let me die;

   Steal from the world, and not a stone

   Tell where I lie.

    

2. Analyze Gray’s and Foscolo’s different attitudes as to the grave.

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