THE GRAVEYARD POETRY - THOMAS GRAY (1716 - 1771)

THE GRAVEYARD POETRY

THOMAS GRAY (1716 - 1771)

Works: he wrote 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'. Gray took more than seven years to write this elegy, which was probably inspired by the death of his friend West. This poem can be divided into three moments.

Stanzas 1 - 11: in a small country churchyard in Stoke Poges, at the end of the day, the sight of the tombs of the 'rude forefathers of the hamlet' calls up in the poet's mind images of humble country life. These images, rich in symboilc elements, such as the elmets, the yews, the cockcrow, the horn and the sickle, lead Gray to meditate on death and on its levelling power. Stanzas 12 - 21: Gray es the humble lot of poor people with the great careers from which their fate excluded them. But he also considers how their poverty also prevented them from committing crimes and falling victims of luxury, pride and corruption.

Stanzas 22 - 32: the poem ends with the supposed death of the author, his burial in the same churchyard and the epitaph on his tomb.

Comment: the neoclassical idealization of poor country life conceals the denunciation of what poverty means in term of hardship and unfulfilment so that the 'rude forefathers' come to be seen in the double role of both happy people and victims of nature and society. Their tombs silent and obscure, become therefore the natural conclusion of an equally silent and obscure life, simbolized, among the other things, by the 'buried gem' and the 'unseen flower'.

Style: the poem is base on an alteration of description and reflections. This tecnique was dear to neoclassic poets, as it enabled them to break the possible monotony deriving from using one only of these two types.

The sepolcal poetry became very popular in Italy, where it inspired, aming other works, Foscolo's Sepolcri. But Foscolo, unlike Gray, concentrated on the function of the grave as a link between the living and the dead. Foscolo in fact believed in life continuing after death through the memories of the living.