A grab-bag of questions related to Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"--pick one you'd like to address in preparation for class:
1. Towards the end of class, it was suggested that the author's attitude to the poor people buried in the churchyard is more patronizing and condescending than respectful and affirming. What do you think? Point to some lines in the poem that support your position.
2. Towards the end of the poem, the poet depicts how he ("thee, who mindful of the unhonoured dead/Dost in these lines their artless tale relate") hopes be remembered after his death. First, he describes what some "hoary headed swain may say" (a "swain" being the way male peasants are conventionally described and romanticized in pastoral poetry), then he supplies the epitaph that his tombstone will bear. What do these two inagined memorials of the poet tell you about him? Cite text to support your claims.
3. There are several reasons why we're reading this poem: to give you some early exposure to one of the "survivors" of this period (now that you've read a couple of representative, but largely unknown poets), to introduce you to some recurring features of C18 literature (pastoral tropes, country churchyards, rigid class divisions), and to give you further practice in reading and interpretation of this literature. To that end: what confuses you about this poem? What questions do you need answers to in order to make sense of it? What stanzas seem particularly difficult or obscure?
Deadline: Friday (1/30), 10am.
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3 comments:
I do not believe the narrator was being patronizing towards the poor buried in the church yard in Thomas Gray's Elegy. I feel his compassion was apparent in the Epitaph, particularly in lines 121-124, "Large was his body, and his soul sincere,/Heaven did a recompense as largely send:/ He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,/ He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. I believe these lines describe a humble and good man that deserves Heaven. He did not have much in his life, and while his life was rather sad, he was a good person. He gained a "friend" in Heaven, and therefore, I believe Gray is being respectful of the dead, noting that they deserve the happiness in the afterlife because they could not gain it in their low positions in life. His soul was sincere (line 121), and therefore, he could have the Heaven he was owed.
While the poem seems to elevate the lot of the poor through showing that people of all classes face the same fait, Gray's choice in diction is demeaning. By using words like "lowly" and "useful" the position of the poor is likened to that of an animal state. Moreover the chosen syntax included in the stanzas that should be elevating the poor lifestyle, or at least paying respect to it further insults through a seemingly dry uncouth tone; " How jocund did they drive their team afield! ". ALthough as a modern reader this is how I perceive the text, it must be considered that this was the only manner proper in which to refer to the poor as a member of upper society. This is a question that would require outside research into what influences played on Thomas Gray.
In contemplating the parts referenced in prompt #2, I'm starting to feel a fairly patronizing vibe through the poem. As the poet describes what the "hoary-headed swain" may say, he makes note of of his own appreciation of the sublime. He describes how others would see him contemplating a brook and "smiling as in scorn" or "drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn". It feels like implicit in these observations is some sort of respect for the poet's higher capacity for understanding. He supposes his intellectual powers to be envied by these laborers, who are nothing more than "useful."
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