Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Masterplots, Revised Second Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Thomas Gray
- First Published: 1751
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Genres: Poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: Rural or country life, Poverty or poor people, God, Human race, England or English people, Eighteenth century, Death or dying, Life, philosophy of, Life and death, Church or churches, Cemeteries
Critical Evaluation:
Thomas Gray probably began “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” about 1746. It was originally a somewhat shorter poem than the version he published in 1751, and some have speculated that the poem may have been occasioned by an actual death, perhaps that of Gray’s friend Richard West in 1742. When Gray designated his work as an elegy, he placed it in a long tradition of meditative poems that focus on human mortality and sometimes reflect specifically on the death of a single person. By setting his meditation in a typical English churchyard with...
[The entire page is 1824 words long]
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