After elegizing the poor who lie buried in the churchyard (as opposed to the local landed gentry, who are buried under the church floor and memorialized with marble slabs and monuments lining the church walls), the speaker imagines how he will be spoken of after his death. He considers, first, the way a rural laborer ("some hoary-headed Swain," l. 97) would speak of him, and second, the epitaph on his gravestone (the final three stanzas of the poem).
Two questions (feel free to answer either):
How does the depiction of the poet in this poem differ from the depiction offered up by the Jones, Leapor, and Pope poems that we've read?
How would you characterize the poet's attitude toward those buried in the country churchyard?
Deadline: Wednesday (2/18), noon.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I feel that Gray has a sympathetic and kind attitude toward the poor buried in the country churchyard. He wishes that one would “Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, / Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; / Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, / The short and simple annals of the poor.” Value is placed on the “useful” work once accomplished in the fields by those who now lie in the churchyard’s graves, and the poet compliments the modest nature of their lives. He then levels social classes and expectations by noting that “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, / And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, / Awaits alike th’inevitable hour,” meaning that every living being, whether rich and powerful or poor and meek, will eventually face death. Therefore, death acts as the ultimate regulator in that it is the universal terminus of every life, however ‘great’ by societal standards.
I feel that there is a level of sincerity within Gray's poem more so than the other three poets mentioned in the prompt, especially Pope. Jones and Leapor's works focus on why they do not want to have fame; Gray focuses on what it is like not to have fame or any chance of that ownership. Also, Gray does not forefront his authorship like the other poets who speak in first person and relate the poem directly to their own perceived experience. "Elegy" is very ambiguous; Gray does not say "I am mindful of the unhonored dead," instead he speaks to himself in third person: "For thee, who mindful of th'unhonour'd Dead / Dost in these lines their artless tale realte."
I feel that instead of "protesting too much" about receiving fame because of his writing (as Leapor, Jones, and Pope do) Gray actually would be perfectly fine in one of these "unhonour'd" graves, as intimated by his bookish ways detailed in the author's biographical blurb at the beginning of the Gray section in the Blackwell text.
Post a Comment