User talk:Ottava Rima/Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard

Note

I wrote the following page because the English Wiki search for the poem only goes to this tiny entry on the biography. Being one of the most famous poems in the English language, I felt it deserved a page. I was further motivated to write on this amazing poem by an amazing girl.

The page is not done. There is more critical reception and the influence section could double. It needs Wikilinks, images, categories, and the rest. It also needs a copyediting and some other fixes (like putting em and en dashes in for my hyphens). This version will be translated into simple English and used for the English wikipedia, but I will take any suggestions.

Anyone who wants to use this page to fill in the obvious gap in the English Wikipedia has my blessing, as long as they follow the proper GFDL requirements. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:43, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

More

• Young, John. A Criticism on the Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard. London: G. Wilkie, 1783.

In 1783, John Young claimed, "The Elegy written in a Country Church Yard has become a staple in English poetry. It is even beginning to get into years." After analysing each aspect of the poem, Young concluded by describing how the anthropormorphized "Criticism" would respond to the poem: "In examining the Elegy written in a Country Church-yard, she has found much room for censure, and some room for praise. The Piece has been much over-rated; and many serious persons, who mediate on death from a sense of duty, consider Conscience as concerned in their finding this Meditation perfect. Of perfections no doubt it contains some; but it contains blemishes too; and if Criticism grant it nothing but its merit, what then will be its praise?"

• Golden, Morris. Thomas Gray. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.

Morris Golden, after describing Gray as a "poet's poet" and places him "within the pantheon of those poets with whom familiarity is inescapable for anyone educated in the English language" declared that in "the 'Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard,' mankind has felt itself to be directly addressed by a very sympathetic, human voice."

He later pointed out: "Gray's 'Elegy' was universally admired in his lifetime and has remained continuously the most popular of mid-eighteenth-century English poems; it is, as Gosse has called it, the standard English poem. The reason for this extraordinary unanimity of praise are as varied as the ways in which poetry can appeal. The 'Elegy' is a beautiful technical accomplishment, as can be seen even in such details as the variation of the vowel sounds or the poet's rare discretion in the choice of adjectives and adverbs. Its phrasing is both elegant and memorable, as is evident from the inorporation of much of it into the living language."

Ketton-Cremer, R. W. Thomas Gray. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955.

In 1955, R. W. Ketton-Cremer argued, "At the close of his greatest poem Gray was led to describe, simply and movingly, what sort of man he believed himself to be, how he had fared in his passage through the world, and what he hoped for from eternity."

• Gosse, Edmund. Gray. London: Macmillan and Co., 1918.

In 1882, Edmund Gosse analyzed the reception of Gray's poem: "It is curious to reflect upon the modest and careless mode in which that poem was first circulated which was destined to enjoy and to retain a higher reputation in literature than any other English poem perhaps than any other poem of the world written between Milton and Wordsworth The fame of the Elegy has spread to all countries and has exercised an influence on all the poetry of Europe from Denmark to Italy from France to Eussia With the exception of certain works of Byron and Shakespeare no English poem has been so widely admired and imitated abroad and after more than a century of existence we find it as fresh as ever when its copies even the most popular of all those of Lamar tine are faded and tarnished It possesses the charm of incomparable felicity of a melody that is not too subtle to charm every ear of a moral persuasiveness that appeals to every generation and of metrical skill that in each line proclaims the master The Elegy may almost be looked upon as the typical piece of English verse our poem of poems not that it is the most brilliant or original or profound lyric in our language but because it combines in more balanced perfection than any other all the qualities that go to the production of a fine poetical effect."

- More critics for the reception part 1. Ottava Rima (talk) 04:14, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

More 2

• Smith, Adam. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Indianpolis: Liberty Fund, 1985.

Adam Smith, in his 21st lecture on rhetoric in 1763, argued that poetry should deal with "A temper of mind that differs very little from the common tranquillity of mind is what we can best enter into, by the perusal of a small piece of a small length [...] an Ode or Elegy in which there is no odds but in the measure which differ little from the common state of mind are what most please us. Such is that on the Church yard, or Eton College by Mr Grey. The Best of Horaces (tho inferior to Mr Greys) are all of this sort."

• Arnold, Matthew. The English Poets Vol III. London: Macmillan and Co., 1881.

In 1881, Matthew Arnold said, "The Elegy pleased; it could not but please: but Gray's poetry, on the whole, astonished his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them; it was so unfamiliar, so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue."

• Anonymous. "Academy Portraits: V.--Thomas Gray", The Academy. Vol. 50 (July-December 1896). Alexander and Shepheard: London: 1896.

An anonymous review of Gray in the 12 December 1896 The Academy claimed that "Gray's 'Elegy' and Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village' shine forth as the two human poems in a century of artifice."

• Nicholls, Norton (editor). The Works of Thomas Gray. William Pickering: London, 1836.

The 18th-century writer James Beattie was said by Sir William Forbes, 6th Baronet to have written a letter to him claiming, "Of all the English poets of this age, Mr. Gray is most admired, and I think with justie; yet there are comparatively speaking but a few who know of anything of his, but his 'Church-yard Elegy,' which is by no means the best of his works."

There were many translations of the poem into Latin, including one by Christopher Anstey, John Roberts and by Lloyd. It was translated into Greek by Gulielmi Cooke, John Norbury, Tew of Eton, Stephen Weston, and Charles Coote.

• Johnston, Kenneth. The Hidden Wordsworth. New York: Norton, 2001.

Gray also influenced how Wordsworth described his education and the death of his father in The Prelude.

• Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

• Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. London: Quartet Books, 1976.

As a schoolboy, Percy Bysshe Shelley translated part of the Elegy into Latin and would also visit the churchyard at Stoke Poges. Later in 1815, when Shelley stayed in Lechelade, he visited the churchyard and composed "A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire", which Echoes the language of Gray.

Influence and more

Later, Alfred Tennyson adopts many features of the Elegy in his poem In Memoriam. He establishes a ceremonial, almost religious, tone by reusing the idea of the "kneel" and "toll" to mark the coming night. This is followed with the poet narrator looking through letters of his deceased friend that is similar to Gray's narrator reading the tombstones to connect to the deceased.

de L. Ryals, Clyde. The Life of Robert Browning. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Robert Burns relied on a similar setting to the Elegy in his pastoral poem "Love Among the Ruins", which also describes the desire for glory and how everything ends in death. Burns, unlike Gray, adds a female figure and argues that nothing but love matters.

Critical responses:

When explaining why he wrote a book about only the poem in 1991, Henry Weinfield explained "the Elegy constitutes an importnt turning point or watershed in the history of English poetry [...] in the Elegy certain themes that are of fundamental importance to the tradition as a whole are fully articulated for the first time, in a way that was not previously possible, and, as a result, acquire a resonance that they did not previously have."

He later argued, "Since its publication in 1751, Gray's Elegy has been one of the most popular poems--if not the most popular poem-- in the English language. Its success was almost immediate, and by the century's close it had penetrated the consciousness of virtually the entire educated reading public."

• Wimsatt, W. K. "Imitation as Freedom" in Forms of Lyric. Ed. Reuben Brower. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.

W. K. Wimsatt, in 1970, suggested, "Perhaps we shall be tempted to say only that Gray transcends and outdoes Hammond and Shenstone simply because he writes a more poetic line, richer, fuller, more resonant and memorable in all the ways in which we are acustomed to analyze the poetic quality."

• Hough, Graham. The Romantic Poets. London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1953.

Graham Hough explained, regarding the status of the poem, "no one has ever doubted, but many have been hard put to it to explain in what its greatness consists. It is easy to point out that its thought is commonplace, that its diction and imagery are correct, noble but unoriginal, and to wonder where the immediately recognizable greatness has slipped in."

• Starr, Herbert. "Introduction" in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Gray's Elegy. Ed. Herbert Starr. Englewood Cliffs: Prentie Hall, 1968.

In 1968, Herbert Starr pointed out that the poem was "frequently referred to, with some truth, as the best known poem in the English language."

Arnold continued: "The Elegy is a beautiful poem, and in admiring it the public showed a true feeling for poetry. But it is true that the Elegy owed much of its popularity to its subject, and that it has received a too unmeasured and unbounded praise."

Richards continued: "The Elegy is perhaps the best example in English of a good poem built upon a solid foundation of stock responses."